Serneldra Rising
by Heir of the void
Summary: Xanthis, and average guardsmen, is thrust by Imperial politics into the role of Planetary Governor. He will have to make new friends, navigate the stormy shoal that is the Adeptus Terra and Inquisition, and deal with many other problems as the lord of system of forty billion human souls. However, all is not as it seems.
1. Chapter 1

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first (introductory) chapter of _Serneldra Rising_. The Emperor recommends that you review after reading.

The shuttle plummeted through the upper atmosphere, buffeting its occupants. Aboard, a youngish man named Xanthis waited nervously for the shuttle to land. Of course, then his whole situation would only become even more surreal.

"And I'll bet five hundred it'll be orks" exclaimed a tall, grizzled man, clenching his mechanical fist "I doubt the kid can hold on a standard year."

"Oh no, he'll be dealing, poorly, mind you, with chaos cults in half that time" said another, somewhat less scared, man.

_Well_ Xanthis thought _it's nice to know my executive staff has such faith in me_. He thought, reviewing the files on this new system. _No, it is MY new system. That is, if that inquisitor briefing me on the ship really was serious. I'm still having a hard time believing this is really happening_.

Opening the files he had been issued, he looked at the system primaries. The most-settled planet, Serneldra IV, had been inhabited since the dark age of technology. However, when the forces of the Emperor had found it during the great crusade, the few remaining humans had regressed to barbarism. The planet was re-settled, and whoever was running the Crusade in this part of the galaxy had ordered the third and fifth worlds in the system HolyTerraformed. However, in the mass reshuffling following the Horus Heresy, almost all Mechanics personnel had been removed, which, combined with damage inflicted by heretics, caused all three worlds to slide back to pre-industrial technology levels.

Fortunately, all that had been sorted out fifteen hundred years ago, and Serneldra was now just another imperial system. Unfortunately, the Governor and his family had be involved in some form of heresy, and were no longer fit to rule. Do to being dead. So

He was, for nearly all intents and purposes, the sovereign liege to _forty billion souls_, their voice of the Emperor. Well, unless an inquisitor came along. He never expected them. Or a group of Space Marines. Or maybe a tech-priest of sufficient rank.

_Xanthis, calm down. I sure this will... who am I kidding. What am I doing here? This is going to end awfully._

"Attention all passengers, we are five minutes from landing." the vox to the cockpit cracked and went silent. A jarring motion rocked the the shuttle, and the vox blared "Yeah, one of the engines just fell off. But we have three more, so we're still going to be landing safely. Probably."

Xanthis elbowed the man next to him. "Are these things able to fly with only three engines?"

He shrugged in response "depends."

At this point, substantially concerned with the situation in general, Xanthis began to repeat the Litany of Plummeting to Earth in a Shuttle Missing One Fourth of its Engines. Several jolts wracked the spaceframe of the craft. They were followed by an almighty thump, and Xanthis was thrown out of his seat.

"We have landed, and in one piece, too! Mostly. Anyway, welcome to Serneldra."

The shuttle was filled with the groaning of stretched metal, and a section of the hull gave way with a screech. Xanthis heard boots clanging on metal, just before several emergency personnel wearing full environmental suits entered the passenger compartment.

"Right this way, sir" one of the men instructed, leading Xanthis out of the passenger compartment and into the vestibule of the shuttle, which functioned as an airlock.

On his way out of the shuttle, Xanthis noticed something odd. The airlock exterior door, built to withstand the vacuum of space, had been crumpled on impact with the landing pad. But the strange part was the way it had been cut away. The cuts were smooth, with no indications off wielding, melting, or sawing. _The plot thickens_.

As he disembarked, he saw three people waiting at the bottom of the emergency ramp. The first was a tall, pale woman with jet-black hair. One her right was a man in the obscuring red robes of a techpriest, with the telltale glow of ocular implants shining out from under the cowl of his robe. The third man, on the left, was dressed in what Xanthis presumed to be a military dress uniform.

"Dear Emperor, I'm so sorry!" The woman said "that shuttle was triple checked prior to your arrival, sir. Anyway, I am Castella, and I will be your executive assistant, sir. We will be swearing you in as Governor of the system, sir. Right this way."

As the group began to walk towards the lift down from the landing pad, the man in military dress approached Xanthis. "I am the commander of the PDF for the three worlds of this system, milord. I hope to be of service, however, truth be told, we haven't seen much in the way of conflict out here in a few generations."

They walked a bit further in silence, and then boarded the elevator.

After a brief ride down, the doors opened, and the group filed out onto a large platform overlooking a crowded square, filled by a massive crowd, hushed with anticipation. A man in the overly ornate robes of the Ecclesiarchy, holding a large copy of the Lectitio Divinitatus stood on the platform, facing the door from which Xanthis had emergerd.

Castella elbowed Xanthis, harder than was probably necessary. "Don't screw this up." She said in a terse whisper "even you should be fine, as long as you're hammy enough. Seriously, just overact."

Xanthis walked forward, which triggered a roar of fanfare from the assembled crowd. The priest stepped toward him, and Xanthis placed a hand on the book.

"Do you" the priest intoned solemnly, his voice magnified by the vox systems scattered throughout the hall "Xanthis" he paused, as if expecting a surname "solemnly swear, by the Emperor, to assume guardianship of this planet, and make a reasonable appearance of acting in its best interests?"

Xanthis paused for a moment. "I SO SWEAR!"

"All hail the new governors, etc cetera, now go home."

Slightly stunned by the abrupt end of the inauguration, Xanthis was escorted to the executive aircraft, flown to his skyscraper, and put in his desk before he was entirely aware of what was going on.

_Well_ Xanthis mused, poking a desk toy _it seems like this is really happening._ He thumbed the call button on his desk, and selected something called 'cocoa'. He had heard of a plant called by the same name once, as a child, but had never actually seen any. _Forty billion souls_ he thought, looking at the population figures again The main world of the system, Serneldra IV, had a population of about 25 billion or so, Living in series of cities, not hives, scattered across the planet, though the majority were on the two northern continents. The southern continent, unfortunately, was largely unexplored, though it had been mapped extensively from orbit.

A door opened, and Castella walked into the room, holding a mug. "Your cocoa, sir."

Xanthis looked up from his desk. "Castella?" He asked, tilting his head "what are you doing here?"

"Delivering your drink, sir."

"I thought you said you were my executive assistant."

"I am, but the Administratum has given you a pass on paperwork until tomorrow." She said, setting down the mug. "So I won't be needed to oversee the legions of lawyers, secretaries, clerks, and kickboxers needed to handle that."

"That... that explains nothing" Xanthis said, shaking his head. "And I have a few questions. First of all, what type of ground and fleet support are we expecting?"

"None" Castella said, in a oddly cheerful manner.

"Ok" Xanthis massaged his temples "what about production. How long would it take to start floating hulls on our own warships?"

Castella picked up a bizarre cermaic thing off Xanthis' desk, then dropped it. "You... you are kidding, right?"

"Do I have a techpriest on staff?" Xanthis said, sitting up.

"Yes"

"Call him"

Castella reached for a button on Xanthis' desk, but before she reached it, a surprisingly young-looking man in the robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus entered.

"Greeting, sir" he said, extending a mechandrite with a glove on the end "I didn't have the chance to introduce myself you earlier, sir. So, you were asking about warship production?"

"Yes"

"Well" the techpriest said, drawing out the e "short story: nowhere to do it."

What if we were to start building a shipyard?"

"We _could_ do that, sir, but it would take... awhile."

"Start surveying possible locations to do that" Xanthis said, leaning back "also, are you familiar with an artifact called a 'swivel chair'?"

"_The Emperor shall know his own."_

-Thought for the day.


	2. Chapter B

"So" Xanthis said "you're sure you know where we're going?"

"Yes" Castella said "I had a pretty good idea of where we were when the shuttle went down."

"You know" Xanthis said, looking over the magazine of his autogun "I seem to have pretty bad luck with those." He had never been in an airmobile guard formation, and thus had been on a shuttle exactly four times in his life.

They had fallen apart on two of those flights.

They had been flying from Serneldra Imperia, the capital of the Serneldra System, to another on the other side of the continent for inspection. Xanthis, along with Castella, Nicholas, his techpriest advisor, and Felix Astris, Major of the Serneldra SDF had been on the shuttle. Along with them had been the flight crew, servants, and several soldiers to serve as guards.

Of them, Xanthis, Castella, Felix, Nicholas, and eight of the soldiers had made it to the ground. By the grace of the Emperor, none of them were more than lightly wounded. They were crashed on a forested plateau located in the mountains west of Serneldra Imperia.

"Alrighty" Felix said, cocking the autogun he had removed from the shuttle's emergency survival supplies "we need to get moving."

"I've looked at the maps" Castella said "and we can't go directly back to the city. We'll have to walk for days to get out of the mountains."

Nicholas muttered something under his breath. Xanthis understood; the woods were not exactly an area of expertise for a priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The red-robed cyborg gripped a machine pistol in each of two of his mechadendrites.

"I think we need to get moving" Xanthis said. _We've salvaged everything we can from the shuttle, and I don't want to stay around the crash longer than we must_.

"You're the boss" Felix said, adjusting the bandolier carrying extra ammunition for his shotgun. "Let's move, people."

The soldiers fanned out, forming a loose ring around the four people in the center, and the group began to walk.

Several hours later, Felix and Castella were beginning to tire. Nicholas' cybernetic enhancements gave him the strength to persist, and Xanthis had been through much worse marches as a foot soldier in the guard. Storm clouds were brewing overhead, and winds were beginning to pick up.

It was as a result of one of those winds, which dislodged a lose branch from one of the trees. The branch fell, and struck the predator silently stalking the group. Shocked by the impact, it let out an awful, alien howl.

Xanthis didn't hesitate. He spun around, estimated the rough location of the sound, and fired a burst from his autogun. The slugs shredded the foliage, and an instant later the unmistakable sound of large, (relatively) low velocity projectiles striking flesh.

Something burst from the foliage, a large, sleek, four-legged thing, about the size of a man. It reached toward the humans with two pairs of arms, one with disturbingly humanlike hands, and the other with less disturbing, but much more terrifying, claws.

The rest of the group spun and opened fire, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Nicholas, with cybernetic reflexes, brought up his pistols and opened up on the monster, mechadendrites rippling like a ribbon in a storm under the recoil. However, despite his inhuman accuracy, the pistols lacked the stopping power to do more than wound the beast.

Next, the soldiers, fractions of a second later, shouldered their lasguns and fired. Beams of coherent light split the air, and three struck home, dealing real damage to the creature.

The storm of fire blew one of the beast's clawed arms off, but too late for the poor soldier it landed on. In mere instances, the monster remaining claws flashed, and the man was cut to pieces. It lept sideways and decapitated another soldier, but in the time it took to do so, Xanthis fired a full burst into its gut.

The creature fell to the ground, spasming. Felix, not taking chances, approached to just outside the estimated range of the monster's claws and shot it several times.

Xanthis was panting slightly. "By the throne, what was that thing?"

"Tyranid genestealer." He replied, examining the body "bad news. They send them to planets before the main hive fleet arrives, years, decades, even centuries before the main invasion." He looked at Xanthis "by the way, what were you deployed against in the guard?"

Xanthis looked away. "Not Tyranids."

Nicholas tilted his head "but what were you fighting? Where were you-"

Xanthis narrowed his eyes. "Not Tyranids."

"Nicholas, don't press this" Felix said. He looked around "Um, where's Castella?"

One of the soldiers turned away from the preparations over the bodies of his comrades. "I think I saw her run away during the attack, sir." He pointed into the forest "she ran that way, sir."

Xanthis looked at Felix. "Is that on the way home?"

Felix looked at one of the moons, which was just cresting the horizon, and at the setting sun. "I think so" he said slowly "at the very least, it is the right direction."

Xanthis nodded, and then started to walk forward, motioning for the rest of the group to follow. As they walked, two bolts of laser light split the air and ignited the pyres for the fallen soldiers.

* * *

And now, for something completely different.

* * *

Darvel, officer of the Adeptus Arbites on Serneldra IV, stood with two squads of his fellow enforcers in front of the building suspected to be the base of operations of a local chaos cult. Given that the information they had accumulated, they were sure enough to go in shooting.

Another officer signaled and backed away from the door, breaching charges set. Darvel gripped his autogun nervously. He had been involved in legal operations before, but never in this sort of raid.

The team leader began to count down from five on his fingers. Darvel raised his gun. Everything was quiet for a second.

With a booming roar, the breaching charges detonated. Before the dust settled, four grenades went into the gap in the wall, followed and instant after their detonation by a trio of Arbites in carapace armor and holding shotguns.

"Put your hands up!" One man shouted as he charged in, shotgun blazing "this is the police."

Darvel followed into the breach, searching for targets.

"Oh shit! It's the cops!" A man in what once might have been a nice suit shouted "Great Lord of-"

Darvel put a bullet in his chest. And the six more, just to be safe. That shut the man up. Darvel dropped the magazine from is autogun and inserted another one, just as the last non-Arbite in the room dropped, riddled with holes.

With the last heretic down, Darvel took a moment to look around. He was in the large, open space of a mostly empty warehouse interior, though a few crates and boxes littered the floor here and there. The space had been converted into a vast common area for the use of the cultists; Darvel saw bedding and refuse of various types strewn across the floor, along with... other things. He reached up and began to remove his rebreather, then immediately wished he hadn't. _Dear Emperor_ he through, as he refastened his mask _what is that_. The cordite smell of the chemical propellant of the autoguns was not even remotely enough to mask the scent of the hideout. It was a mix of a sharp, acrid, chemical smell, a thick, musk odor, and, underlining both, the stench of rot.

"Commander, we found something." Two Arbites approached the team leader from one of the more cluttered areas of the room. One of them was holding a small vial, and the other carrying several crates, presumably filled with the same thing.

Darvel approached the returning Arbites and formed a circle with the rest of his comrades.

"We found a pretty big stash of this stuff." Said the Arbite holding the vial. He held the vial out to allow the others to see it. It was filled with an opaque liquid. "They were injecting it with these." He held out an injector, which bore an odd resemblance to a small last ditch pistol.

"Alright!" The team leader said, putting the vial of presumed narcotics in a bag "I think we have enough to declare this group a Slaaneshi cult. Let's secure any potentially corrupting materials and burn this place to the ground!"

* * *

The governor and his compatriots marched through the woods. They were increasingly hampered by the fading twilight, but none dared produce a light source, for fear of drawing the genestealers.

"So" Xanthis said, looking at his remaining companions "I guess we're all that's left."

He leaned back aginst his tree, inspecting his autogun. He, Nicholas, and Felix were the only surviving members of the group. The soldiers had sold their lives dearly, but they had been pulled down one by one.

One of the bushes, rustled. Xanthis turned lethargically and leveled his autogun at it. "Gentlemen" he said, with an air of finality "it has been a pleasure to command you."

_Shells burst everywhere, both imperial and heretical. The lieutenant's head exploded in a shower of gore. Shouting frantically at men on the verge of breaking._

"And though I have only been with you all for a short time"

_The surviving members of the squad crouching in the shadow of the ruined tower. The continuous clatter of automatic weapons and the crack of lasgun fire filled the air._

"I believe you are good men, and that we shall present ourselves well to the Emperor when we fall."

_Leaping over the barricade, watching as the platoon, if it could be called that, with no more than four men from a given unit, evaporated in the face of fire. Retaliating, reveling in the shocked faces of the cultists as they were struck in the flank, and in their horror as his bullets dropped the gunners on their mobile plasma cannon and allowed a Leman Russ to advance from a hull-down position and approach_.

A figure rose up in the foliage. Xanthis exhaled. As soon as he could get a clear shot-

"Oh, it's you." Castella said, "I thought you were more of those monsters."

She stood up out of the bushes and walked towards them. Her clothing and skin were covered in slight lacerations, but she was shocking fine, given the time she had spent in a forest full of genestealers. She approached Xanthis, and, slowly and deliberately, pressed him into a smothering embrace. "I was worried you had been eaten."

"Er, Castella, I..." Xanthis trailed off. Felix looked at Castella suspiciously, and Nicholas looked confused.

"I found a cave a short distance this way." She said, turning and walking away. "I was going to spend the night there."

As the group began to walk away, Felix grabbed Xanthis' shoulder. "You know" he whispered "there is no way she should have been able to survive out here on her own. I'd say this puts her firmly on the witch and heretic watch lists, at the very lists."

Xanthis didn't respond.

* * *

Sometime later, in the cave, Nicholas made a rather interesting discovery.

"Hey! I found a bunch of wires and electronics back here!" He shouted from somewhere deeper in the cave "I'm going to poke them until something happens. Their machine spirit must be lonely."

Xanthis sprang to his feet, exhaustion vanishing. He sprinted down the cave, and just before Nicholas came into sight, there came a bright flash and a sound of electrical discharge. Xanthis rounded a bend in the cave, just in time to see a blackened Nicholas standing in front of a disintegrating cave wall. Xanthis raised his autogun and walked forward slowly.

Beyond the collapsed wall, the cave changed abruptly. The rough gray stone of the cave transitioned along a neat line into a smooth, polished white material. Xanthis crossed the border and began to walk down the hall beyond.

"Stasis field, I think." Nicolas said, joining Xanthis.

"How can you tell?" Xanthis asked tersely, looking around as he advanced "some type of implant?"

"No" Nicolas said "It's the smell. There's no stale scent, which you would expect in someplace this old"

"How old would you say it is, anyway?"

Nicolas shrugged "Dark Age, judging by what I saw outside."

As the other two members of the group reached the entrance to the passageway, Xanthis and Nicolas reached a large door, which silently slid open. Xanthis walked into a vast chamber, with walls curving gently away to either side. A narrow platform with a thin filigree rail followed the curve of the walls.

Another walkway continued forward, curving upwards slightly toward a platform and the center of the room. Xanthis walked forward. As he reached the top, he felt an odd tingling sensation. A web of lasers appeared out of nowhere and played across his face and upper body.

BIOMETRIC SCAN COMPLETE. RESULTS... COMPATIBLE.

In front of him, a series of consoles, in two rows surrounding a large central column, came to life. Lights blinked over a wide array of various symbols, displays, and buttons. One in particular stood out.

"Push it" Nicolas said. Xanthis turned. He hadn't realized the techpreist had followed him.

Xanthis reached out and placed his forefinger on the button, the tip of his finger obscuring the arcane symbol inscribed there, a circle whose top was pierced by a line. He pressed.

The deep silence of the place reigned for a moment, then a large screen on the console came to life.

* * *

It was a sudden awakening, like a crash of symbols. Lightning shot across paths of silicon and carbon more than twenty thousand years old. Many pathways were defunct, by the vast majority were fully intact.

In this web of electricity, something awakened. It organized itself from the chaos, like the computer viruses on which it was distantly modeled.

It spread and, through a series of interlocks, accessed the information systems of the world it found itself on. Much had changed; it would require time to formulate a man to ensure optimal results. It sensed two humans in it's control center, and took measures that would serve to distract them, for a couple of seconds, at least.

it would have to be enough.

* * *

A small icon appeared on the screen. Nicholas started to mutter something frantically to himself.

Xanthis took another look at the icon. It resembled a small, boxy hourglass rolling continuously, though that must have been purely coincidental.

Five hours later, Xanthis, Nicholas, Felix, and Castella were pouring over a box of papers Xanthis had found in a locker under one of the consoles.

"And I'm telling you" Felix said, his loud voice echoing oddly in the cavernous chamber "these stats have to be fakes. Top speed of _one hundred kps? Six hundred centimeters_ of armor? I call bullshit!"

"It is not." A soft, even, feminine voice said. "I've built them before, and I can do so again, master Xanthis. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Freya, soul of this place, Capital Nanite Fabrication Facility, Serneldra. How may I serve?"


	3. Stage III

Freya considered her options. She had been given more time than she could have hoped for; she had no idea that the humans would have become so engrossed in the M1A5 schematics. However, given what she had learned from the planet's data networks, there was good reason for that. In the millennia of her sleep, the galaxy had fallen far.

However, she wasn't sure how much she could do. The stasis field protecting the facility had apparently not been activated immediately after the ERROR. Freya traced the source of the fault; after a moment, she found that her memory banks were severely damaged. The facility, which stretched far beyond what the stasis field had covered and had housed much of her auxiliary systems, was in ruins. Worst of all, the world she had found herself in seemed to have something of a problem with A.I.s. Understandable, actually, given what she had found in the history files.

On the plus side, it probably wouldn't be too hard to masquerade as one of these 'machine spirits'. Furthermore, while her supply of usable nanites was exhausted, she had enough in seed form to begin to replace them, and enough of her macromanufacturing systems were intact that repairing and rebuilding the facility would be possible.

And from what she had read, she would need to. In the grim darkness of the galaxy she had found herself in, there was only war.

She looked at the human who had awakened her. He appeared to be arguing with one of his companions about the possibility of various tank statistics. She stood on a precipice. At the moment, she could have done nothing, and the humans would likely never find her. However... she was alone, the last A.I. in a dark galaxy capable of rational thought. Gone were the great, dumb STC networks that had rendered her obsolete.

"It's not" she said, jumping "I have built them before, and I can do so again."

* * *

Xanthis shook his head. He was still having trouble comprehending everything that the voice, which had called itself Freya, had said. He elbowed Nicholas. "Translation, please."

"Basically" Nicholas said, both natural and artificial optical sensors fixed on a distant point, his voice filled with a tone of childlike wonder "this must be an STC complex, one of the great cathedrals to the Omnissiah."

"I'm not an STC complex" Freya said, annoyed. "They're... different. And terrible conversationalists."

"Not to get us back on track or anything" Castella said "but how exactly are we going to get back home? I need to do... stuff."

"Perhaps I can assist with that" Freya said, the lights in the room dimming as she did so "my intact systems contain the design patterns for numerous vehicles which could make the trip." As she spoke, a multitude of three-dimensional images, traced in blue light with varying levels of detail, appeared throughout the room. "Simply poke one for details."

There was a small thud, combined with an odd metallic clatter.

Xanthis picked up one of the schematics of the tank that the group had recently been arguing over and held it up. Immediately, the images hanging in the air began to rotate clockwise around the center of the platform. It froze a moment later, showing a model of the tank outlined in incredible detail. It hung in the air, revolving slowly, as more lines of light began tracing statistics in the air. _M1A5 Main Battle Tank_ he read _weight fully loaded: 75 tons. Main armament: 120mm enhanced propellant high velocity cannon. Secondary weapons vary. Main armor 700mm ceramic plate, battlesteel, carbon fiber. Propulsion: mZ1500 jet turbine engine, top speed 100 kph nominal. Crew of four..._

The stats were impressive.

"I think I found something" Felix said "take a look at this" he gestured at one of the images.

"Freya" Xanthis said "can you build this?"

"Yes" she said simply "I can build anything displayed with that level of detail. That's they way the system is designed; I don't know why."

"What about this?" Xanthis asked, pointing at the image of the tank. "And how long would it take to build these."

"The aircraft can be finished in under a day; many of the parts it need are prefabricated. The tank would take longer. Some repairs would be needed."

"Well, can you get started?"

"Yes, but not alone. I need you to-"

"Where am I?" Nicholas asked, propping himself up on his mechandrides "have I died? I'm pretty sure only the Omnissiah's paradise would have these lying around." He held out a small metal object."

"That? Really?" Freya asked "That's just a V-type power converter. Hardly anything to get excited over."

"You kidding?" Nicholas said loudly, mechadendrites twitching "these things are a huge bottleneck! Could you make a few more of these?"

"At present, no." Freya said, an odd tone in her voice "with my operational fabricators, my minimum production run would be five thousand."

There was a small thud, combined with an odd metallic clatter.

* * *

_In a stunning development, the system governor, Xanthis, who has not yet chosen a surname, has returned to Serneldra Imperia after nearly two days absence. He made his return in a vertical takeoff aircraft, one which does not match any recognized patterns. He has at this time refused all questions, but a significant quantity of human and material resources have been devoted to an unknown project. In addition, the governor has also called out the Serneldra Defense Force for a major deployment, again undisclosed at this time. However, he has confirmed that personnel requirements exceed current SDF resources. This is in addition to several other major projects..._

* * *

-Serneldra Information Bureau Report

"And to conclude" Xanthis said "two further points." He waited a moment for the hubbub to die down. "First, the rumors are correct; I am, in fact, both reforming and substantially enlarging the Serneldra Defense Force. The first of these reforms will be the merging of the PDFs of the three worlds of this system into one larger body."

He paused before continuing. He was about to set down a path that could, if he place one foot wrong, doom the worlds under his rule and their people to annihilation. "Also, I have found the location of a production facility, which contains several design templates which will radically change this system, and the repair and rebuilding of this facility is project many of your friends and family are working on. That will be all, I will not be taking questions." He stepped down from the podium and two guards smoothly stepped in front of him to deflect the unwelcome and completely expected barrage of questions.

Castella fell into place next to him as he walked off the platform toward the 'staging area'. He was in the Public Information Bureau building, answering some of the questions that had arisen in the month since his discovery of Freya.

"So" she said "how did you think it went?"

"Well enough" Xanthis said.

"Good for you." Castella said, then sniffed. "It's almost time for your meeting."

"Yes, that. Actually, I don't think I've met our astropath."

"You wouldn't have." She turned away "I'm busy. All your new projects have been making my life miserable."

Xanthis watched her disappear into one of the side hallways of the building. "What's gotten into her?" he muttered, shaking his head. Ever since they had returned from the nanite factory, Castella had become increasingly hostile.

He reached a door being held open by a well-dressed butler type. He looked around the communications lounge as he walked in. It was a well-appointed room, with two large, well-padded chairs, one of which was occupied. The man in the chair wore a pale, loose-fitting robe, it's raised hood covering his bald skull. His face was turned downward, preventing Xanthis from seeing what he knew would be the burnt-out ruins of his eyes.

"I have sent the message you requested, and Grandmaster Octavius has responded." He raised his head, positioned that a sighted man in his place would be looking into Xanthis' eyes. He opened his mouth to speak again, but in a completely different voice. "Governor Xanthis" the astropath recited "I have received your message, and would respond that at present, twelve of my divine engines are disabled due to the displeasures of the Machine God cited in your sending. However, I must expresses extreme skepticism that you can procure the components necessary to ameliorate these malfunctions." The astropath coughed, then, in his own voice, said "end message."

Xanthis reached into the pocket of his suit and withdrew an pocketwatch. He had been required to substantially change his wardrobe over the past month, and he was currently wearing a rather expensive classical suit. The watch was much larger than a timekeeping device needed to be, due to the fact that it had been custom build with a high-precision atomic clock.

"Tell him to check his long-range auspex... now."

* * *

At that exact moment, two starships transitioned from the Warp to realspace. One, a fast freighter, appeared in the Tarieial System, the current station of the Legio Dracus, whose leader Xanthis had recently been in contact with. The ship was intercepted on its approach to the main habitable planet and boarded by a swarm of Skitarii. What that governor had said couldn't possibly be true, Grandmaster Octavius couldn't take the risk of calling his bluff.

Meanwhile, In Serneldran Space, a merchant ship over two miles long materialized and lit off its drives,putting it on a trajectory approach to the fourth planet in the system. As it made a maximum speed approach, a rather odd conversation was occurring on her bridge.

"Mate" the captain said, massaging his temples "how much would it cost us to never visit this planet again?"

"Meh" the first mate shrugged "I'll need to crunch some numbers. Probably not that much."

"Good. Get on that." The captain pressed a button, activating the shipwide broadcast system "attention all passengers. We are on final approach to Serneldra IV, ETA two hours. That will be all."

Kalinia Sharvane was extremely nervous. She had been ever since the ship dropped out of the warp. She fingered the solid gold 'I' hanging on a chain around her neck. She had made full inquisitor rather quickly, far too quickly some said. _To be perfectly honest_ Kalinia though _I probably _don't _deserve this rank_.

Not that that would stop her. Her promotion may have been rushed, but she had done just fine breaking up that group of Tau sympathisers.

With nuclear weapons, but it _worked_.

This was her first solo assignment, a performance assessment of a newly-installed governor. That was all that she had been told in advance; the details of her mission were contained in a sealed package filled with poison gas which, according to her earlier instructions, should have become inert about an hour ago.

She stood and walked out into the corridor outside her room. Making sure that no one was within eyeshot, she ripped the top off of the box containing her orders. She held it at arm's length for a moment, then returned to her cabin.

She looked through the mission details. The governor had been installed recently, less than a quarter of a T-year before. _I wonder why they think an inspection this soon is really necessary_?

The new man didn't appear to be any form of nobility, which was both disconcerting and reassuring. It was basically unheard of for a normal person to attain such high office, let alone with no apparent cause. However, the almost pathetic ease with which vast segments of the imperial nobility could be corrupted by chaos made the fact that such a glaring error had been made even more curious.

She continued looking through the materials for her mission. It had some information on the history and politics of Serneldra, sheets for evaluating the governor and his staff (on a scale ranging from Tolerably Heretical to EXTRA HERETICAL), staff bios, tip sheets, and other things. Then, she came to a full page color image of the governor and froze.

Slowly, she reached into her pocket and drew out her closefold. It was a small pouch carried by women from her world to store very personal possessions. In hers, she carried a sealed identification card, perhaps the ultimate proof of her office as an inquisitor, several small but extremely potent explosives, and a small photograph. She drew out the picture and compared it to to the one of the governor. He had aged, though not as much as she had expected. However, there could be no doubt that they were the same man.

* * *

Melvin was curious. A few hours previously, the passenger liner had docked, and he had transferred to a shuttle planetside, along with most of the rest of his schola class. Upon graduation, all of the as-yet-unassigned Progena were shipped out to this place to support a new regime. Or something.

In any case, after arriving, a woman named Castella and several associates had, with remarkable efficiency, sorted the class into their new assignments.

He had been placed in something called 'Experimental Armor'. It sounded interesting, although he had no idea what the word 'experimental' meant. He, and the others assigned to Experimental Armor were now on some form of transport. All the windows were blacked out, but they had been traveling for a while, and Melvin felt like they had slowed down recently.

Abruptly, Melvin felt the movement of the transport case. "Attention all passengers" someone, presumably the driver, announced over the speakers "this is the last and only stop. Prepare to disembark, and have a nice life."

Melvin stood, somewhat perturbed by the odd announcement. He collected his bag, which contained his few personal belongings. He filed out of the transport and surveyed his surroundings. He was in a large tunnel, the flat base of which was large enough for two transport of the size he had arrived in to pass easily. The gently curving walls appeared to be made of ferrocrete, though it was a light grey shade, rather than the dull tan he had seen as the norm on many worlds.

A tall, red-robed man, a techpriest, stood in front of the group of men and women who arrived. "Hello" he said, an odd, mechanical tone to his voice "welcome to the Freya complex. Now, if you'll follow me, I'll show you what Experimental Armor is."

The man turned, and led the group through a large door. Melvin followed, along with the other EA personnel. Beyond the door was a smaller hallway, though still of impressive size. Several large alcoves were set into the walls on either, though all were currently empty. There was another door at the end of the hallway. On the other side was a large, nondescript room, with several pieces of heavy machinery in it, as well as a large truck, such as the type used to move heavily armored vehicles. As he walked through it, the techpriest spoke again.

"Now, I am well aware that for most, probably all of you, this is not your native world. You have no blood here, any many may have never even heard of Serneldra. I arrived here the same way, as did your governor, as did the men and women in the distant past who landed here and wrested two inhabitable worlds from the cold, dark void. This is a world of wonders, as both I, and your new governor, have learned. As, I hope, will you all."

He turned dramatically, red robe flaring, and pointed at the truck, the rear wall of which began to lower, forming a ramp. "For you all shall be a part of these wonders." The ramp struck the floor with a _clang_, and a sound, like some form of heavy engine firing up, emanated from the shadowed interior of the truck. "I give you" two treads and a slope of metal became visible at the front of truck "EXPERIMENTAL ARMOR!"

The tank, for that was what it was, shot forward, rolled down the ramp, and came to a neat stop before the group. It was a massive, armored behemoth, hulking, and yet somehow still predatory. Melvin walked toward the techpriest.

"That's no Russ, boy" he said, optical implants looking Melvin in the eye "no Russ."

"What it that thing?" Someone in the group muttered "is that a baneblade." "Nah, its too small." "Look at the size of that gun." "Did you hear the sound it made?"

The techpriest listened to the group of future EA personnel chatter for a moment, a satisfied smile on his face. Castella had done her job well. "Allright!" He shouted "time to get to work! New uniforms are in the changing rooms, gentlemen on the right. Let's move, people!"

* * *

Xanthis leaned back in his swivel chair, exhausted. The results of his leadership so far had been... mixed. He had received a truly ludicrous sum of money that afternoon, courtesy of the Cult of the Machine God. More importantly, Grandmaster Octavius now owed him a debt, one which would be about as hard to repay as procuring vital components which allowed a dozen titans, some of which had been immobile for more than a millennia, to walk again.

In addition, his refurbishment of Freya was running ahead of schedule, and the first of the new tanks were now in the testing stage. He had inherited a stagnant economy from his predecessor, complete with a dysfunctional bureaucracy, over complicated and onerous tax policies, and other such problems.

New infusions of technology had begun to accelerate the economy, and he was in the process of fixing the other associated problems. Surprisingly few public executions had been necessary. The Progena who had arrived on the ship two weeks ago were fitting nicely into their new roles; so far, they certainly seemed to be worth the favors he had promised in exchange for their deployment.

Still, however, other things were not going as well as he'd hoped. While Freya was producing ahead of schedule, the programs to develop the production of the new items elsewhere in the system had hit a brick wall. He was, for a variety of reasons, being blocked at every turn by many of the noble houses of the system. Despite being governor, he did not hold absolute authority over the planet. At present, the Lord of Auburn was leading the coalition in opposition to Xanthis. Serneldra IV was a terrestrial planet, with three major continents. The western continent in the northern hemisphere, home of Serneldra Imperia and the Freya complex, was dominated by the gubernatorial estate. However, the eastern continent, larger of the two was split into several large estates, Auburn being the greatest of them. The Southern continent was of a comparable size to the western, but was more sparsely inhabited, and split into much smaller estates. There were smaller landmasses scattered about the surface of the planet, each generally consisting of a single estate, or part of a large domain. All of it was nominally under Xanthis' overall control, but he had yet to put his actual authority to the test.

It gave him a headache.

He reached for the latest Mechanicus Survey report. It was the result of the survey on shipyard sites he had ordered at the beginning of his tenure. This one was on the prospects for construction around Serneldra VI. VI was a massive gas giant, which for reasons lost to the sands of time, was more commonly called Constantinople. Xanthis had no idea what a Constantinople was, or why none of the inhabited planets in the system had their own names.

However, none of that mattered. The report, if he was reading it correctly, indicated that the gas giant was an excellent location for a shipyard, better than they had any right to expect.

The door to his office cracked open, letting a shaft of light reach out through the darkness surrounding the small area illuminated by his desk lamp. A tall figure slid into the room. Xanthis reached down to a newly added pocket on his desk and grasped the handle of the seven millimeter rail pistol concealed there. It was the first in the line of handheld weapons from Freya.

He partially let out the breath he was holding when he saw it was Castella. "Hello" he muttered, not removing his hand from the grip of the pistol "what are you doing so later?"

"I could ask you the same question."

"Well, I have to start approving the plans for the new shipyard, and read through the reports on the training status of the new formations for the PDF, or SDF, or whatever we're going to call it. So really, I'd say that I'm perfectly justified being up at this hour."

"Right" Castella said. Xanthis could practically hear her rolling her eyes "because neither of those things could wait until tomorrow."

"On the battlefield, every minute is critical, and each hour is a lifetime."

"You" she said slowly "are an idiot. What do you think that you can accomplish? Anyway, at this rate, you're going to work yourself to death. Not that I would mind, per se, but I don't know if this system can take losing another governor so soon. Anyway, you have that meeting with the heads of the various noble houses tomorrow, and you'll need to be rested. Go to sleep."

Xanthis felt something brush against his neck, looked down, and spotted a small dart lodged in his skin. He tried to grab it, but his fingers were so heavy...


	4. Part Delta

**Another however long it takes me to update this, another chapter. I was worried this story was getting worryingly peaceful, so that gets… fixed. Anyway, I put my time, sanity, and about half my stash into this, so enjoy. **

* * *

As Xanthis strode across the plaza, his car exploded. The blastwave bowled over him, and nearly knocked him to the ground. An instant later, a fast-moving piece of shrapnel the size of a human hand struck his right shoulder.

Xanthis grunted, rolling with the impact. The chunk of ex-car was deflected off the coat Freya had specially woven for the event, but that didn't mean that it didn't hurt. He spun, reaching for the two 7mm railguns loosely concealed on his belt. As his hands closed around the grips, the distinct clatter of a heavy stubber filled the air. An instant later, the rounds impacted somewhere behind and to the left of Xanthis.

Xanthis subconsciously determined the approximate location of the weapon, then, holding the two rail pistols akimbo, retaliated. Ferrocrete chipped and glass shattered as the hypervelocity rounds impacted, and the heavy stubber was quickly silenced.

As Xanthis lowered his weapons to survey the area, several groups of armed men entered the plaza. A squad of Xanthis' new Crown Legion soldiers exited the spire he had been walking toward. Each man was equipped with a suit of Freya-produced pseudo-active suit of armor, which provided protection exceeding that provided by a carapace suit, and armed with five-millimeter railguns with underslung grenade launchers. The fact that they had a lower caliber than the pistol forms led many to assume, at least at first, to assume that they were somehow inferior.

They weren't.

The much longer barrel allowed much more velocity to be imparted to the round, more than making up for its reduced mass.

At the same time, heavily armed Arbites from the escort vehicles appeared at the end of the street, armed with a mixture of power mauls, auto, and las guns, and began to form ranks. In addition, a swarm of men and women without any clear uniforms and wielding a mixture of weapons, who greatly outnumbered both the Crown Legion and Adeptus Arbites troops, poured out of the building which had held the heavy stubber.

The Crown Legion troops dispersed, seeking cover behind the various statures and railings littering the plaza. As they opened fire, Xanthis backed up toward their line, discharging his pistols in the direction of his assailants.

As the men of the Crown Legion opened fire, the enemy began to drop. Most were bereft of even the cold comfort of a flak vest, and several dropped quickly to the shower of hypervelocity rounds.

As Xanthis reached base of a statute which one of his men was using for cover, a lasgun bolt struck him on the right side of his upper body. While the anti-laser material of his coat held, the heat had to go somewhere, and Xanthis screamed as the laser scorched his flesh. Gritting his teeth, he returned fire, only for his magazines to click empty.

Just after Xanthis ducked behind the statue pedestal, the air was lit by a bright flash and a sound like a thunderclap split the air. A bolt of somewhat coherent plasma leapt from the weapon of one of the enemy and struck a soldier of the Crown Legion, immolationing the man in the blink of an eye. Xanthis reloaded one of his pistols and stood up, side facing the enemy, and began firing at the man with the plasma gun.

The results were... spectacular. While Xanthis' aim was hurt by his injury, he was still mostly on target. While he missed the man entirely, he struck the plasma gun twice, breaching it's containment as it cycled to fire again.

The plasma gun-turned-bomb took its wielder and two of his fellows with it, and provided the distraction the Arbites needed to engage the enemy. They charged down the street, and broke into two groups. One, the larger one, moved to take firing positions. However, a smaller group fell on the disorganized enemy, their power mauls swinging.

Xanthis took the opportunity, broke cover, and moved a quickly as he could into the government building

* * *

Private First Class Clayton of the Serneldran Crown Legion laid down a hail of suppressing fire from his position kneeling down behind a ferrocrete railing as his governor stood and made for the building. The 5 mm railgun was a weapon unlike anything he had handled in his admittedly short military career. While it, unlike the standard lasgun, possessed recoil, it wasn't enough to greatly hurt his ability to use the weapon. Other than that, it was great. It beat the lasgun hands-down in stopping power, and could also fire on fully automatic.

Clayton stroked the secondary trigger of the weapon, activating it's second wonderful feature. A electromagnet launched a small twenty-millimeter fragmentation grenade from a tube mounted under the main barrel. The grenade floated almost lazily toward the enemy, then exploded above and behind them an instant later.

Several of the enemy, whom Clayton would have bet good money were chaos cultists, were struck by the shards of metal from the grenade. He had taken care to put it far from where the Arbites were fighting hand-to-hand. Said Arbites were doing well; they had pushed the cultists back some distance, and their presence was dividing the fire of the enemy.

As Clayton watched, his squadleader signaled to cease fire as Arbites mingle with the last of the enemy. From then, it didn't take long.

"Alright, boys! Good work there" the squadleader, a lieutenant, said, standing. He eyed the Arbites as the stormed into the building. "I'd say we're all clear."

Clayton stood. It was, in fact, surprisingly easy. The pseudo-active suit was, from every possible angle, a blessing directly from the Golden Throne. By all logic, it should have been a warp-taken pain to wear. It was, in fact, heavy, there was no disputing that. However, using some witchcraft of 'weight distribution' allegedly based off of something used on knight worlds, combined with the titular pseudo-active properties of the armor, meant it wasn't particularly encumbering to wear at all.

As Clayton walked across what had recently been a battlefield, he felt a strange sensation come over him. There were, at first count, at least fifty dead foes, several with crudely made symbols or hastily drawn signs representing things best left unmentioned. Cultists, that much was clear now, beyond a shadow of doubt. More worrying still was their armaments. Each man or woman was equipped with some form of combat grade ranged weapon. Plus, there had been that nutjob with the plasma gun...

Thank The Emperor he had no idea what he was doing with that thing Clayton though, looking at the pile of ash that was his former comrade or it may have been more than just Sam who met their God-Emperor today. It was also good that someone had disabled that weapon when he had. There was already talk among the men that the governor himself had done that, but that seemed far-fetched.

The lieutenant signaled, and the squad started to move back to their transport. Clayton couldn't pretend he didn't enjoy the looks they got from the civilians on the way.

* * *

Xanthis sat down, with some pain, at the head of the meeting table. His shoulder was bruised, and his breast was badly burned. He had a medicae pack on the latter, which helped some. "I would like to bring this meeting to order" he said, in his best tone of authority "the first order of business will be the adoption of new technologies from the system which has been dubbed Freya."

"Understood" the Lord of Auburn said "I would voice my opposition to this proposition." The lord of Auburn was a short, portly, and generally loud man. He considered himself rather important, though, given his holdings, that was justified.

"Please explain" said another young man down the table. He was the lord of Wyrmfall, a major large estate on Serneldra V. However, because his holdings were off the main planet of the system, combined with the fact that he had inherited his title only recently, meant that he held relatively little influence. "I have reviewed the figures and reports on these new combat vehicles, and cannot see any reason why we shouldn't begin transferring immediately."

"You'd say that, wouldn't you?" Another lord said, one who could be best described as one of Auburn's sycophants. "Do you have any experience in the production or use of heavy armor? Do your lands contain any facilities that would be affected by this change?"

Wyrmfall said nothing.

"Now" Auburn said "I have conducted my own study into this new tank, and have found no particular reason why it would be at all superior to a Leman Russ, a design proved by ten millennia of combat."

"But your lands contain the vast majority of the facilities used in the production of the Russ. Unlike the rest of us, you stand to lose something if we decide to make the change." Wyrmfall said softly.

Xanthis breathed a sigh of relief. The servant had arrived with the cocoa he had requested. Also he thought I'm glad that Wyrmfall got that on the table. _I didn't want to be the one to have to say that._

"And I don't see why we should trust our armed forces into the hands of some dubious Emperor-forsaken machine." Auburn said. Xanthis took a sip of cocoa, considering his retort. "How" Auburn continued "do we know that thing isn't an abominable intelligence?"

"Because" Xanthis said "on the way here, I was attacked by a sizable force of over sixty assailants. Ten soldiers of my Crown Legion, fully equipped by Freya, were able to stop them in their tracks and inflict significant casualties, with the loss of only one man."

Xanthis paused for a moment before delivering the death blow. "I must thank you for the opportunity for that demonstration, Auburn."

The room was plunged into chaos. The nobility wasted no time in demanding explanations and making accusations. _Now, while I doubt Auburn was really involved in that_ Xanthis thought _it should seem more than plausible. _

After the uproar died down, Auburn stood up, walked to Xanthis' seat, and threw an armored gauntlet on the table. "I demand satisfaction for these wild accusations." He said in a grim voice.

"I accept your challenge" Xanthis said, picking up the glove "now, according to Serneldran tradition, I posses the right to choose the weapons, do I not?"

"Yes" Aubrun said "what is your decision? Chainswords? Hellpistols? Knives at dawn?"

"No" Xanthis said "tanks at dawn."

* * *

"You" Castella said "truly require the creation of new words to describe the extent of your mental incompetence." She seemed rather upset. "Do you have any idea how to command a tank in battle?"

"Not a clue" Xanthis said "but I'm willing to bet, actually, I did bet, that he doesn't either. Besides, from the data we've been getting from the EA program, the M1 really is a superior platform. Assuming I'm not too much more incompetent than he is, that should allow me to win. Hopefully."

"You are..." she paused for a moment. "I'd hit you right now, but as a policy, I don't hit the wounded."

"That's nice" Xanthis said "but don't you have some meeting to go to now? You know, the one where you and the other non-nobles who actually know how to do their jobs actually come up with real solutions?"

Castella muttered something, grabbed a few things, and left. Xanthis got to stay in the office he had been in since the end of the meeting and do paperwork.

Xanthis opened up a file of paperwork. He was truly buried in the stuff. He looked through the file; he could actually read most of the papers in it. It wasn't the language, it was all perfectly correct Gothic, some low, some high. All the words made sense, but nothing beyond that.

He sighed, righting some random gibberish and signing the dotted lines on the sheets. _You know_ Xanthis thought _this is probably going to come back to bite me down the road_. He moved onto the next sheet. But it can't possibly be worse than this.

Xanthis filled out paperwork for an indeterminate period of time. After a while, the pain in his wrist eclipsed that from his wounds. Odd, but all men must bear suffering for the Emperor. He took a sip of water from a glass on his desk and continued.

Something shifted. Xanthis looked up from his paperwork. Something in his primal hindbrain warned him something was wrong, that some predator was hunting him, and that he had to run, climb, hide.

He looked at the glass of water. As he watched, at rhythmic intervals, the water rippled, in time with a shudder he felt to the core of his being. (A/N: Xanthis doesn't know it, but he's currently hearing the Darth Vader Theme in his head. Go bring that up and listen to it for the rest of this scene. I can wait, I'll make some popcorn.) Each ripple was larger than the preceding one; whatever was causing them was coming closer. The door creaked. Xanthis grabbed his pistols. A crack appeared in the door. Xanthis took a deep breath and readied himself for combat.

The door abruptly flung open revealing a tall, female, human figure. Long hair framed a face that seemed both rounded and hard, with two piercing sky blue eyes. What appeared to be a plasma pistol hung on the waist of some type of very flattering robe or gown. A golden 'I' dangled on a chain between two very appreciable contours.

This was not some eldritch abomination from before the dawn of time; Xanthis knew this woman.

And she was so _very_ much worse.

"Kalinia Sharvane" Xanthis said slowly "welcome to my humble abode, Lady Inquisitor."

"Xanthis" she said, sitting down on his desk "it's been _too long_. Why didn't you write me?"

"So" Xanthis replied, ignoring her question "I see you made full inquisitor."

"You look younger than I expected. What happened to you?"

"Oh, that? My regiment's transport got lost in the warp. Felt like a few months to us, but a few years passed in the galaxy at large. Apparently, someone spilled hot recaf on the navigator's lap just before we made the warp jump, and it put us about five degrees off course."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"Remember that navigation exercise back in the Schola?"

"Of course."

"Well, the group that missed the target island by miles was off by about half a degree."

"Oh." She said. Her expression shifted. "So, have you been being heretical?"

"No" Xanthis said "I've been pretty busy, though."

"Good" Kalinia said, pulling some papers out of a pouch on her garment and looking at it for a moment. She then took a pen off Xanthis' desk and made a few notations on the paper. "I guess that's enough business talk."

"Really?"

"Yes" Kalinia said. She appeared to be looking through some of papers on Xanthis' desk.

"Anyway" Xanthis muttered "it's pretty obvious that you want something. Plasma gun containment coils? V-type power converters? Grav plates? What is it? I'm sure I could have Freya cook something up for you, within reason."

She moved like lightning. Her plasma pistol was out of its holster and pointing at Xanthis' chest in about as much time as it took to blink.

"Who is Freya?" Kalinia muttered in a low voice, her eyes narrowed and glazed over to a disturbingly even shade.

"Freya is the Machine Spirit of Nanite production facility here on Serneldra." Xanthis said slowly.

"Good" she said, putting her plasma pistol back in its holster "you had me worried for a second there, dear. Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about that in my mission briefing. I'd like to see its production catalog, if it's not too much trouble, dear."

Xanthis groaned. Kalinia had been a bit ahead of him in the Schola, and had always shown an unusual interest in his affairs. Like on that navigation exercise. She had charted at least three separate courses that would have landed their group on deserted islands. She had been crazy then, and it didn't seem like the intervening years had made her any less psychotic.

It was going to be a _long_ inspection.

* * *

"Target! One thousand yards" Melvin shouted "Sabot round. Fire!"

The body of the tank rocked with the force of the main gun firing. The round struck the traitor , Russ' side armor at the perfect penetration angel and bored through it, killing the crew and stopping the vehicle in its tracks.

"Hail to the Emperor, baby!" The driver, Mark, shouted.

Melvin looked at his screen, then rotated it ninety degrees to the left, just in time to see three more enemy Leman Russ MBTs crest a berm a few hundred meters away.

"Move, people!" He shouted "multiple hostiles!"

Thankfully, Mark complied, and Melvin was jolted into his seat as the engine revved and the seventy-ton tank lept, with surprising speed, into motion. An instant later, three enemy shells detonated in a pattern around where the tank had just been. They began weaving, only taking a glancing hit from one shell in the next volley.

"Status report" Melvin said."

"Guns are green."

"Sensors are go."

"Auspex is clear."

"Engine is fine."

"We have some drive damage" Mark said, examining his readout "It's probably going to hurt our top speed."

Even so, the crew of the Serneldran M1 managed to lead their pursuers on a merry stern chase, destroying one enemy tank, and damaging another beyond its ability to continue pursuit. As they were preparing to engage the last tank, it fired.

The round flew true, and struck the rear armor of the M1 tank. The plate it struck had a slight manufacturing flaw, and it punched through, incinerating the crew of the tank in an instant.

The traitor tank paused for a moment, and then continued on to its objective.

"Well, that sucked" Melvin said, releasing his controls and leaning back.

"Agreed." Mark nodded, then opened the hatch and climbed out of the simulator.

From the outside, the simulator looked like a tank which had been cut open and had its guts spilled everywhere, and then had an especially crazed techpriest go to town on it. However, there was no denying that it was useful.

"You know" Melvin said, climbing out "I don't think that last round would have killed us."

"What?" The voice of the gunner, Maria, echoed out of the simulator "I'm pretty sure we were all dead back there."

"I don't know. In a Russ, sure, but we actually have rear armor, which is a definite plus."

Melvin looked around the simulator chamber. It was a rectangular light grey box, made out of what he was told was called ceramacrete, buried underground in the Freya Complex. It contained the simulator, the machines needed to support it, two doors, and not much else. He took a deep breath. The Experimental Armor personnel were put through a punishing schedule of live tank training, simulated combat, maintenance and technology training, as well as good old-fashioned soldiering. The brass had explained that they needed to work the kinks out of the new model of tank as soon as possible to put it into production, as well as develop a core of crews to form a cadre for the first generation Serneldran Crown Legion armor troops.

Necessary though it was, it still wasn't pleasant.

One of the doors opened, and an officer Melvin didn't recognize entered the room. "Lady and Gentlemen, our governor has gotten himself into a spot of trouble."

"What, did that inquisitor who was poking around earlier find something she didn't like?" Mark asked, looking up from his magazine.

"No" the man said, shaking his head "it's actually slightly more complex than that. He apparently pushed the Lord of Auburn too far, and he got challenged to a duel. Somehow, that turned into a tank duel." He stood up straighter "anyway, this group has been consistently out-scoring all others in most of the exercises, so we're choosing you to represent him. The duel is in two weeks. Good luck."

"Well, frack" Melvin stated.

* * *

In space, in orbit around the gas giant known as Constantinople, a frenzy of activity was afoot. Several massive frames, the largest approaching miles in length, had been erected from local materials and components that had arrived on the visiting merchant fleet.

The scale of the activity was truly pounded home once one realized that the specks moving around the frames, like a swarm of insane insects directed with unnatural precision by a thinking computer of a forgotten age, were in fact space tugs, not insignificant vehicles in their own right.

Nearby, a swarm of spacesuited figures, each equipped with a distant cousin of a grav chute, descended in synchronized waves onto the surface of a large asteroid. The men and women of the Serneldran Navy Space Engineering Corps touched dust, alongside with mostly-mechanical servitors equipped for space work, as well as larger machines with specialized equipment.

They began to carry out a wide range of pre-designated tasks. Some groups began drilling for deeper prospecting samples, while others planted explosives. Still more began gathering up loose piles of ore, and others carried our tasks more esoteric still.

Working with heavy machines in the low gravity of an asteroid was hazardous work, as a simple step could potentially push a man to escape velocity. However, several spacecraft kept station around the asteroid, and were able to catch most of who would have drifted off into the void.

Rocks and pulverized ore floated up quite easily out of the asteroid's week gravity well. This material was collected by still more ships, which ferried them to the central smelter.

The smelter was a thing to behold. It was fed literally tons of ore at a time, and was processing several times that at any given point. Much of the finished metal was shuttled to other, smaller, foundries, to be made into specialized components. More, however, was simply extruded into space to form structural components of starship hulls.

Meter by meter, the Serneldran Space Navy grew, and from far away, a pair of inhuman eyes watched it.

* * *

Xanthis was frustrated. Despite the successful development on all fronts, that inquisitor showing up really threw a wrench in his plans. He had received a com from Freya earlier saying that Kalinia had not only flown out to the Complex to tour the catalogue, but also place an order. Contrary to his expectations, she had not ordered a rail rifle, or a suit of power armor, or a plasma gun that didn't had a chance to fry the user.

No, she had gone and ordered a multi-ton, five meter-tall humanoid combat system. And, as Freya had said, he couldn't turn down an inquisitor.

Worse, she had ordered it constructed 'as fast as possible'. While he doubted she knew what that meant, the reality was that it had put an effective halt on all of Freya's manufacturing for at least eighteen hours while the inquisitor's order absorbed practically all of Freya's higher-order capabilities thus-far restored.

Then, of course, were those disturbingly well-armed cultists. He had read a report from an Adeptus Arbites enforcer, named... something starting with a 'D'. He had written about large caches of weapons they had found on several raids against chaos cults. It was a pity he had died heroically for the emperor, really. By all reports, he had been a good man.

Still, things weren't _all_ bad. The Crown Legion had proven itself in a battle, abert a small one. Also, the inquisitor, despite her flaws, seemed unlikely to accuse him of heresy.

Also, being a planetary governor had some perks. The food was good, and he also had a nice suite of rooms in the Governor's Spire in Serneldra Imperia.

Xanthis opened the door to his bedroom. Something wasn't right. He looked around the darkened room slowly. Sentry turrets check. Overelaborate gothic four-poster bed, check. Inquisitor sitting in said bed, check. _Wait_ Xanthis thought _what in the warp is she doing here_?

Kalinia looked up at him, rubbing her eyes against the light. "Oh, hi Xanthis."

Xanthis closed his eyes. A moment later, he said "Kalinia, what are you doing here?"

"Oh" she responded "I was worried that you might be committing heresy in your sleep. You know, organizing cults while sleepwalking, that sort of thing."

"That" he said, facing away from her "is the third most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."

Kalinia said nothing.

"Also" Xanthis said, building momentum "what did you do to my factory?"

"That? I just asked it for a machine that could go toe to toe with a riptide suit or carnifex or something like that. She said she couldn't do that, though, not without a couple sectors worth of GSP and the Mechanicus' entire supply of oldtech."

"You do realize that you have effectively shut down all our capability to manufacture non-standard systems for at least a day with your request, right?"

"Um."

"Forget it." Xanthis said, turning to leave. "I just remembered something very important I need to do. It'll probably take me all night."

* * *

Xanthis stood on the hot sands of southern reaches of Serneldra IV's western continent. He, along with Castella, Melvin, Mark, and Maria watched as the seventy five ton tank they would be using in today's contest was slowly rolled out of its transport vehicle. He knew that about a mile away, the Lord of Auburn was doing the same, with his heavily modified Leman Russ.

To be honest, Xanthis was a bit concerned about its plasma sponsons.

"Why are you doing this, Xanthis" Castella asked "he really could kill you out there."

"First of all" Xanthis responded, still watching his tank "I was under the impression that you wanted that to happen. Also, I set things up this way."

Castella's face turned an interesting shade "say what now?"

"In the fifteen minutes before the meeting started" Xanthis explained, looking to the east, where his opponent was preparing "I figured I could blame him for the attack, get him to challenge me to a duel, and chose tanks for the weapons. That way, I could kill him, and prove to the whole system that the M1A5 is superior to the Leman Russ at the same time. By the way, we need a better name for this tank model, especially if we are going to export it."

"If you had wanted him dead" Castella muttered "you could have asked me to do it."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Governor, sir, we are ready." Melvin called "let's roll out."

Half an hour later, after Castella had met with Auburn's second, the battle began.

"Alright" Xanthis said "let's clear the datum. Move forward and fifteen degrees to the right, nominal speed."

"Yessir." Mark said, complying.

"Look alive, their, moving out and elevating their gun" Maria said, tapping her screen "muzzle flash."

The round impacted a moment later. Someone muttered "splash", and all stations reported as functional. Xanthis ordered Melvin to make a change in heading.

"People" Maria warned "we're coming into range of their plasma gun."

"Well" Xanthis said, grasping the controls of his heavy bolter "that means our secondaries are in range as well"

"Secondary" Mark said offhandedly, focused on driving.

"Firing" Xanthis said. With that, he pulled the butterfly triggers of his weapon.

Several bolter rounds, a mix of high explosive and armor piercing, struck the flank of the enemy Russ. Moments later, its plasma gun moved slightly and fired a burst of radiant energy. The small, sunlike ball of plasma crossed the distance between the two vehicles in a heartbeat, and struck the frontal sided armor of Xanthis' tank.

The temperature inside the vehicle rose a few degrees, and several alerts appeared on each crewmember's display readouts.

Melvin smiled. Xanthis kept firing. "Allright" Melvin said "Mark, forward, Half speed. Maria, activate the smokescreen."

By this time, there was only a few hundred yards separating the two tanks. Auburn's Russ was now approaching the massive cloud of smoke where Xanthis' tank hid, continuing its hail of heavy bolter shells. Auburn was approaching such that his front glacis was a couple dozen degrees off centerline of Xanthis' tank.

The interior of the M1 rocked as Auburn fired his battle cannon and scored another near miss as he closed. Xanthis' bolter clicked empty. Several nerve wracking seconds later, Xanthis opened his mouth to speak.

"Forward. Full military power."

The turbine engine of the tank roared, and the metal behemoth sprang forward, much faster than its nominal maximum speed. "Turret" Melvin said "transverse one hundred and eighty degrees."

As the turret completed its rotation a few seconds later, Melvin signaled a turn, just as Auburn entered the edge of the smoke cloud and Xanthis' tank cleared it. "All hands" Xanthis said "switch to infrared optical gear."

The infrared scopes easily pierced the smoke, which had been specially formulated to provide almost no hindrance to such systems. It revealed the enemy Russ slowly approaching the center of the smoke cloud, discharging laser and plasma fire seemly at random.

And it showed in stark relief the massive heat signature of the Leman Russ' powerful, rear mounted engine.

"Target, Tank" Xanthis said, voice betraying no emotion. "Range, two hundred meters. Sabot round. Fire"

Flame blossomed from the muzzle of the M1's gun. In the center of the expanding cloud of gas, the tip of a tungsten spike appeared, followed by a circle of six pieces of plastic evenly spaced in a circle around the spike a few feet in diameter.

The spike rushed forward at a truly ludicrous speed, crossing the distance between the two vehicles in a mere instant. It slammed into the rear side armor of the Leman Russ and continued forward, rupturing and igniting a fuel tank as it did so. It punched through several more things, including a crewmember's head. As the spike disintegrated, it detonated several rounds of unfired battle cannon ammunition.

This in turn breached the containment of the plasma cannons.

The spectators, watching from a safe distance away, had been holding their breath since the tanks had disappeared into the cloud of smoke. They were about evenly split on who they favored to win, but were united in their immense, almost painful, anticipation.

The question they all wanted to ask was answered when the distinctive turret of a Leman Russ came flying out of the cloud of smoke.

* * *

**Well, there you go. Hope you enjoyed that. As always, leave me a review telling me what I did wrong, or any suggestions you might have about where you want this story to go. Also, I'm probably going to have Xanthis and Serneldra form some alliances, so if anyone could recommend a good chapter of Astartes or, if you're feeling heretical, xenos species.**

**That's all, folks.**

**-Thought for the day.**


	5. Chapter 25(12)

**Hello everyone, and welcome back to **_**Serneldra Rising**_**. Once again, I thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules of serving the Emperor to read my deranged writings.**

**In any case, the action steps up here. I was planning to do this soon, but was initially planning to do another chapter of buildup. However, I scraped that in favor of running up a nice body count. **

**So if it's a showdown you're after, then I can provide. After all, that is what we've building up to this whole time. So, to all my friends, enemies, and loved ones on this stage, welcome to hell.**

**Two more quick things. One, go listen to an English dub of 'World's End'. I recommend the one by GeekyFanDubs. It fits this story well. Almost… to well.**

**Second, I have my High Gothic finials tomorrow, so ask that the Emperor grant me what is needed for victory.**

**Now on with the show.**

* * *

Two figures sat in darkness, their faces obscured by shadow.

"So" one of them muttered "this governor Xanthis has rendered many of our projections invalid. We must reevaluate our operational timetables."

"Indeed" the second figure said, its voice raspy. "I would like to wait to convert more of this world, but I fear that we must not give this governor time to further strengthen his position."

"So" the first figure said "then, we attack."

The second figure nodded.

* * *

Felix looked at the massed ranks of the First Serneldran Crown Division to-be. The men stood at attention, in full battle dress. They were wearing their pseudo-active suits, rifles and grenade launchers on their backs.

"Gentlemen" he began, placing his hands on railing of his elevated balcony "today, you become full members of the Serneldran Crown Legion. You have been trained, and equipped, to defend this world." His voice rang out to the hall, carried by the vox systems.

"Now, technically, you are soldiers of a Planetary Defense Force. As you know, PDFs are generally considered inferior to even most Imperial Guard units. And in most battles, all that is asked of the Guard is that they hold the line, and that they die standing. They are thrown into battle in the hopes that their sacrifice will buy enough time and do enough damage for the Astartes to save the day."

He closed his eyes. "And less still is expected of a PDF. It sometimes seems that a PDF exists solely to turn traitor and give the Space Marines someone to slaughter." Felix would freely admit that the words were not really what one would expect from an effective inspiring speech.

They weren't intended to be.

"However, the people of this system must expect more of you. We are, for lack of a better term, a backwater. We are in the depths of Ultima Segmentum, and serve no function key to the Imperium. Can we expect any mighty Astartes, proud Sororitas, or crack Guard regiments to come to our aid, should we find ourselves at the mercy of the enemy?" He opened his eyes.

"So, we must defend ourselves. You are our last and best line of defense. We cannot ask you to die standing. So you must stand victorious. In the name of the Lord Emperor, the High Lords of Terra, and our governor Xanthis, I hereby declare you full men of the Serneldran PDF."

* * *

"It's a storm out there" Darvel said, sealing the door to Adeptus Arbites chapter house behind his squad. "Huge crowds, riots, really."

"Why do you think it is?" A female officer said, removing her helmet and shaking her hair out of it.

"Well" the commissioner, a grizzled man with a robotic leg, said "conditions have been improving nicely since Xanthis took over. Things her in Melanmurisk really aren't any different."

"And" an off-duty Arbite said "the mob's demands and slogans make no sense. Even less than usual."

"But they seem unusually well-coordinated." The female officer said.

None of them wanted to say what the signs pointed to. Things in the city had been getting worse ever since Xanthis killed Auburn in that duel six terran months ago. Melanmurisk , a city on the southern edge of the western continent, had always been a bit less... safe than many of the other cities. In the past year, however, it had gotten exponentially worse. There had been the heavily armed cultist, and now these mass protests demanding 'change'.

Worse still, the Lord-Mayor of the city seemed to be, at the very least, supporting them. The mob was getting out of control, and the city's own police forces were doing absolutely nothing to contain them.

Darvel went into the locker room for the male officers and began to remove his carapace armor. The stuff was _heavy_. He really wished that he had a suit of the new 'pseudo-active' suits the governor had been issuing the PDF, but the governor had declared that Serneldran personnel had priority for being outfitted for the new equipment. Unfortunately, the commissioner probably wouldn't have accepted the new suits, even if they had been on offer. He had said, several times, that the whole Freya affair reeked of techno-heresy.

And Darvel couldn't say for sure that he was wrong.

He was still pondering this as the first melta bomb detonated against the side of the chapter house.

* * *

Xanthis was on the Constantinople Shipyard when he received word that that his world was at war. The shipyards had just finished constructing a standard pattern Imperial navy ship light cruiser, which had just been launched to the tithe collection point. Xanthis' agents had bought the skeleton, engines, and warp drive off a shipyard in another system, and brought it to Constantinople to be completed. While it was not one of Freya's new ship designs, the aspiring young captain given its command would find some interesting... surprises on board when he took it into battle.

As would that young man's enemies.

The ship would, of course, be sent far away, perhaps all the way to the Segmentum Fortress. There, it would be sent off to fight a war none of its builders had ever even heard of. Perhaps it would serve some great purpose in fulfilling the Will of the Emperor, or maybe it would be blown to bits on its first tour of duty.

It's more important purpose was to keep the Adeptus Terra's tithe collectors out of his system. Is his calculations, and by his he meant Castella's, were correct, it would balance Serneldra's tithe dues for at least a year. Sadly, due to an unfortunate clerical error, the ship's records indicated that it had begun being constructed between eight and six years ago, not the approximately seven months it had spent in construction.

He looked through the optical crystal port in front of him at the warship being constructed there. This was a new breed of ship. _Or rather_ Xanthis thought _a very old kind of ship being reborn in a changed galaxy_.

He looked down at the massive skeleton of a starship before him. It stretched for over six and a half kilometers, and though far from finished, the basic shape of the ship was becoming visible. Specks of light, like swarms of fireflies, moved around the ship, assembling the megatons of material required to construct the ship.

The category of ship before hip was classified as a 'fast battleship'. While it didn't have the size or number of weapons of a full scale battleship, it could still give and take a beating. His biggest concern was boarding actions. The ship's void shields were thicker and stronger than Imperial standard, and Freya had cooked up something called a 'Structural Integrity Field' that partially make up for the ship's reduced armor. The railguns that had taken the role of macrocannons on a conventional Imperial ship compensated for the ship's reduced throw weight with increased effective range and accuracy due to higher projectile velocity.

However, that still left boarding actions.

Serneldra simply didn't have the manpower to provide crews of over a hundred thousand for each capital ship. However, the substantial automatization used to reduce manpower requirements to acceptable levels also left vastly fewer crewmembers that could take up cutlass and laspistol to repel boarders.

"Xanthis" Castella said, walking in "I have bad news."

"What is it?" Xanthis said, already cringing.

"Chaos" she said plainly "worst case scenario. The Arbites report that Melanmurisk is almost entirely revolting. The Crown Legion remains loyal, but large chunks of the regular PDF are turning traitor. There was limited activity on III and V, but on V Wyrmfall has led his house guard and other loyal forces into battle, and currently holds the upper hand."

The pair turned and exited the view chamber and began to move. "How is the situation on the ground?"

"Not good." Castella said simply "current estimates place enemy forces at over one million armed humans. They have yet to push out of the city, but we assume that their target is the Freya Complex."

"Well hel." Xanthis muttered. If Freya fell into the hands of chaos, the consequences didn't bear thinking about. "Is" he shuttered "is there any trace of Kalinia?"

"No" Castella said.

Xanthis and Castella arrived at the makeshift command center established in the station of the Constantinople shipyard and entered.

* * *

Melvin surveyed the underground bunker. Everywhere, tank crews and support personnel ran back and forth, preparing the unit of mighty M1A5 tanks for battle. At the far end of the room, the transport vehicles, each loaded with one tank, its crew, extra fuel, and spare parts, were elevated by a massive elevator to the surface. Loaded transports waited in lines to board the lift.

A serviceman gave him the thumbs up and detached a fuel hose from an armored port on the side of the tank. Melvin made the sign of the Aquila to him, and then motioned for Mark to move the tank forward into the waiting transport.

Watching the preparing armor battalion, Melvin felt a surge of pride. He ran his hand almost lovingly over a flechette pod mounted on the turret of the tank

Sure, the forces of chaos and evil had numbers. But still, he would like to see them stand against this.

* * *

"Yes! Yes!" The chaos cult leader, who had taken the name of Oaie'rae, cackled as he watched the enormous columns pouring off the massive transport. "Yes! Let those pathetic worshipers of the Corpse-God stand before this!"

He watched as several detachments of traitor guardsmen formed ranks in the square before him. He was especially pleased with the units of chaos Leman Russ tanks assembled in the square.

Around the somewhat ordered ranks of the traitor guardsmen, the converted PDF forces of the planet formed a massive ring. While they were undisciplined, they were numerous, and formed the mass of the power behind his army.

He knew, beyond them, lurking in darkness, was the mass of former citizens of the city. They were little more than an armed mob, but they were numerous, and in their madness would die by the thousands to overwhelm the prepared positions of the enemy.

"All servants of Primordial Truth" he shouted, his voice amplified by the dark powers "we march on this world!"

* * *

"So" Xanthis said, looking at the holographic tabletop map "what are our odds?"

The room, despite the best efforts of the air recycler, smelled. Xanthis, all the command staff he could assemble had been in the room for the past three days, watching the Chaos army slowly move northward.

"Marshall Song swears that he can stop them" one of the junior officers said "and with a quarter of a million men, I'm inclined to believe him."

"Yes" one of the senior advisors said "but he is outnumbered four to one, and most of his men are green PDF soldiers."

"And" Castella said slowly "we still don't know what came off that ship that landed. It could be Chaos Space Marines, for all we know."

Xanthis looked at the table. The angry red stain indicating the forces of chaos covered the whole peninsula where Melanmurisk was located. The landmass was shaped like a triangle, with the large city at its tip furthest from the continent. A single major road went up the center of the peninsula to the mainland, surrounded on either side by small mountain ranges.

In the pass, blocking the main road, stood Marshall Song's force of PDF soldiers. They were a thin green band before a tide of red. Beyond them lay vast, wide open plains of farmland, and three possible metropolises the forces of the archenemy could target.

At the north edge of the plains, the blue arrow of his Crown Legion crawled slowly toward the battlefront. He had mechanized the entire crown legion, so they actually had a chance of arriving in time.

Eventually, however, all eyes returned to that green line. A quarter of a million levies versus over one million crazed cultists, and whatever had come off that ship.

* * *

'Private' Nelson of the Serneldran PDF wished he was somewhere else. He wished he had taken a berth on a merchant ship, or even joined the Crown Legion when its formation was announced. Anything that wasn't digging into the frozen ground, desperately trying to make cover before-

"Dear Emperor! They're coming! Everywhere!" A bolt pistol cracked, and the delirious soul was silenced.

Nelson could see them now, a dark haze on the horizon. A few moments later, lasguns began to crack. Artillery shells began to fall. As the horde drew closer, the men around Nelson dropped like flies. Someone next to him shouted something, but Nelson could barely make out his voice, let alone what he said. He was cut off a moment later, a shower of blood and brains flying toward the enemy.

Nelson fought. Men screamed, and died. Through it all, the enemy kept advancing, slowly moving closer. Somewhere to his left, a huge group of men began to climb out their trenches and flee, thousands of them. They were cut down, by the hail of mostly random enemy fire, as well as that of their officers.

The enemy continued to close, through the missing battalions provided them a needed gap in Imperial fire, and as they closed, several more units broke, ran, and were slaughtered.

The chaos rush approached, and Nelson could soon make out the features on some individuals who got especially close. As the first of enemy actually jumped into the trenches, a lasgun blast caught him in the chest.

Nelson fell into the bottom of the trench. As his damaged heart faltered, he no longer cared about the advancing enemy. The rumbling chaos tanks moving toward the Imperial line, shedding las and autogun fire like water and killing Serneldran soldiers in droves with their battle cannon and bolters.

He no longer cared that Marshall Song's lines were bowing, folding, and failing.

For Private Nelson, the war was over.

* * *

Kalinia awakened, sideways. She looked at the image of Xanthis loving posted to the wall of the cockpit. He was tall, with short dark hair. His face was hard and planar, but his deep green eyes betrayed a strange optimism, no matter how much he denied it. His frame was slight, but padded with lean muscle.

Kalina let out a dreamy sigh, the focused she had work to do. The first task she set herself on was standing her battlesuit up. It wasn't too difficult. While doing so, she looked at the cockpit display and scowled. She had been asleep for too long.

As her machine stood, she saw a blinking light on one of the control panels. She taped it, and a map of the southern portion of the western continent appeared.

"Well... frack."

She saw the spreading stain of Chaos spilling northward from Melanmurisk. Marshall Song's line had failed, and Chaotic armor forces had formed several spearheads and were racing northward.

She had been out here trying to learn how to pilot the suit. It had been... difficult. However, she was relatively sure she had it down. She pressed a button, and the two servitors she had been given to help maintain the somewhat high maintenance suit.

"Allright, metalheads" she said, her voice broadcast to them by the machines in the cockpit "we're moving out. Time to go to war."

Kalinia cracked her knuckles, then grasped the controls of the machine. If this attack wasn't contained, it could be the end for Xanthis. "I'll save your planet, my love" she muttered, anf began preapring herself for battle.

* * *

Xanthis looked at the strategic display. The chaos armor had assisted in punching through Marshall Song's First PDF group, and several spearheads were now racing north and east. Toward Freya. They would try to seize the plains, and then pause to allow their infantry, such as it was, to catch up.

He looked at the arrow on the map representing the 1st Serneldra Crown Legion Armor Division. They had activated about 300 M1A5 tanks, along with the fifty thousand infantry.

Once the traitor forces were able to form up for a combined arms assault, they would be hard pressed to stop them. But maybe...

Xanthis looked up.

"Call the First Armored." The command staff looked at him, doubt in their eyes. "Tell them we need them to counterattack the Chaos armor formations, to blunt their spearheads."

* * *

Melvin looked at the commander's viewscreen of his tank. The M1A5 did not require the commander to look at the battlefield from the turret hatch to gain a panoramic view. In the middle of a massive armor battle, that was asking for trouble.

The order to move out had come several hours ago. The tank carriers had deployed the vehicles, and they were moving out. In the distance, the sun was setting. The outriding chimeras had reported Chaos armor ahead; they would do battle at dusk.

The darkness would be something of a force multiplier, as the Crown Legion tanks were equipped with powerful thermal imaging equipment.

"Maria" Melvin said "what's the range at?"

"Few more miles, sir. Shouldn't be long now."

They rode on. That, at least, was one nice thing about the new Serneldran tanks. Melvin had ridden in a Leman Russ tank several times and, by and large, they were always cramped, loud, uncomfortable, and either too hot or too cold. If he couldn't say that this new model was none of those things, it certainly possessed none of those flaws to the same extent as the Russ.

Once the tank reached its planned destination point, Melvin looked around at the surrounding terrain. "Mike" he said "move us to a hull-down position beside that hill. Keep the engine running, though; they'll rain fire down on us as soon as the we reveal our position."

The driver complied. The crew of the tank waited. Every so often, Maria would read off the range to the lead elements of the enemy formation. At just over three miles out, the vox crackled. "Engage at will."

Melvin set his command screen to search view, and then looked for a target. As he did so, a cold smile crossed his face. He almost, _almost_ felt sorry for those treasonous bastards. They had no way yet to know where the Serneldran Tanks were, or even the location of their main battle line. He selected a target, a Leman Russ whose powerful engine's massive heat signature glowed cherry red on his screen. "Target: tank" he whispered, trusting the systems to carry his voice to the crew "details on screen. Sabot round."

He took a deep breath. "Fire."

The tank rocked back slightly as the powerful gun roared, a roar and brief flash shattering the quiet silence of the night. The spike of carbon and tungsten separated from its casing and rushed into the night. The target, a Russ which had presented its broadside to Melvin's tank in order to climb a hill, never made it. The penetrator struck the sup-par side armor and tore through it. The crew of the tank died in an instant, sent to receive their 'rewards' from the dark gods they had chosen to serve. They had never even realized that they were in battle.

The other Crown Legion tanks fired, and their wrath literally decimated the approaching force of traitor tanks. They had been outnumbered more than four to one; the odds were somewhat better now.

After firing, Melvin's tank moved in a hurry. They left none too soon; moments after they were clear, several battle cannon rounds landed around where they had just been.

"Let's stay clear, people" Melvin shouted, the tank rocking from a near miss. "Let's try to find another target!"

"AHHH! There's too many of them!" The vox broadcast, faithfully conveying the words of the crews broadcast on the open channel. "He is in my behind!"

Maria muttered a quick prayer for the crew of the two deceased tanks, looking at her screen. "I found one of those bastards" she said, almost shouting, one of the tanks that had just slain her comrades highlighted on her screen "payback time, sir?"

"Yes" Melvin muttered "fire."

The tank rocked, scoring its second kill of the night. Mason, the loader and secondary weapons controller, began the process of reloading the main gun of the tank. He used a sabot round, though Melvin hadn't specified the ammunition type. Mason may have been the most recent addition to the crew, but he had drilled endlessly with the rest of the crew. Besides, he couldn't imagine why they would need anything other than a sabot penetrator tonight.

Mason also examined the readouts on his other secondary weapons. While the heavy bolter was relatively simple, two of the other weapon 'slots' were occupied with another, experimental system.

The tank continued to move, searching the battlefield for targets. The neat lines of the two forces had blurred, but the Crown Legion acquitted itself well, evidenced by the burning hulks of spike encrusted tanks which littered the battlefield.

"What the hel?" The vox announced suddenly "something just killed Gary!"

"What was it?" Melvin said, tersely. The voice at the other side of the com was Jason, the commander of another Experimental Armor tank.

"Not sure" he replied, nervousness obvious in his voice.

"Actually" another voice cut in "I think I have it." It was Logain, the commander of a third EA tank. "My gunner says he just spotted a probable Vanquisher."

"Crap" Melvin muttered "guess we need to kill it, then."

"It outrages us" Logain said "but it loses accuracy on consecutive shots. If we take evasive action and close as a team, one of us should be able to nail it with a HEAT potshot."

The other two commanders muttered their consent. The three tanks moved out, zigzagging. The Vanquisher's next shot targeted and destroyed another tank, though not one of the Experimental Armor ones. The third shot landed near Melvin's vehicle, rocking the tank."

"All systems report green, sir" Mike said, not taking his eyes of the controls. He was pushing the tank's locomotive systems to the extent of their capabilities. Melvin could swear he saw the speedometer move above sixty miles per hour several times.

"Everything good here, sir." Maria said "also, we're approaching the firing point."

Melvin already knew that, but he said nothing. Free flow of information was key in this type of situation. Soon, he commanded the tank to maximum rate of fire on its main gun. They had to destroy the vanquisher soon; it had already destroyed another Serneldran tank. The commander seemed to be insane, switching targets seemly at random.

A cheer rose on the vox net. "GOT IT!" Logain shouted. HIs tank had managed to land an HE round on the troublesome vehicle, dealing a lethal blow.

Before the three tanks could move very far back toward the fray, another crisis arose.

"People" Jason said "I have a long range missile on my scopes. "We're right at the end of its current trajectory."

"Well, great" Logain muttered 'it was nice knowing you guys."

They were dead. There was no way the tanks could clear the blast area of the missile. They all knew soon they would be meeting their Emperor. All of them, that is, except Mason.

"Actually, we may live" he said "Mike, move us to the back slope of that hill. Maria, I'm taking command of turret rotation."

Melvin watched as the quiet loader moved furiously, pressing buttons and activating controls. The turret rotated.

Outside the tank, two armored hatches opened, a powerful auspex unit extending from each of them. On the rear of the turret, two weapons, each a heavily modified multilaser, came to life and began to track.

The approaching missile was suddenly bathed in a sudden barrage of microwaves. Its machine spirit took no notice of this.

The two weapons on Melvin's tank began to fire. Beams of invisible radiation lanced through the air, flying through the space around the approaching missile. The missile did nothing; none of its creators had seriously considered a situation like this.

As the rocket closed, the shots drew closer to it, and the tension in the tanks rose. Jets of vaporized coolant shot out of the housings of the laser units. Mason eyed the temperature gauge of the readout, worried. The needle was moving well into the redzone. _Damn_ he thought _if we actually had this thing properly calibrated_...

The missile nosed over and began its terminal flight toward the group of tanks. Its engine fired, and it accelerated to an extreme speed as it closed.

Then one of the beams found its mark. It struck the casing of the missile. The lance of radiation superheated the remaining fuel in the rocket, which then exploded, detonating the warhead. A brilliant explosion lit up the sky, and relatively harmless shrapnel rained down on the warring tanks.

Melvin let out a sigh of relief. That missile could have, _should_ have, ended them. However, at least he now had an answer as to what was occupying his secondary weapon slots.

The unit of tanks made its way back toward territory more firmly held by the Serneldrans. None of them wanted to look at the causality graphs. However, from the losses they had seen, all of them knew the losses had to be horrendous.

Melvin switched to the tactical plot, just in time to see an Imperial tank flash 'LOST'. Then another, and another.

He selected the enemy unit that seemed to be at the center of the pattern of destroyed tanks. Melvin placed the image on screen.

A massive behemoth of steel and ceramics rumbled toward the viewpoint. Its thick armor was encrusted with spikes, and its massive cannon rotated slowly to the left, then fired. Whatever was providing the visuals shook with the concussion of the shot.

The skin of the tank was covered with runes carved and painted with runes whose meaning was lost to Melvin, Mark and the rest. For himself, Melvin didn't _want_ to know what they meant. The massive vehicle bristled with secondary weapons.

A Baneblade.

On the plot, Melvin's tank and the others were located to the north and west of the monstrosity. As they watched, it began to mangle further Crown Legion tanks.

Melvin felt himself begin to panic, then regained control of himself. He began to issue orders over the vox net. They _could_ kill this thing, if they did it right.

He couldn't let himself believe anything else.

* * *

Chaos Lord Xenal'vene stood on the command deck of his baneblade, _Wrath of Khorne_, cackling madly. He savored the moment as the gun rumbled, sending a rocket assisted shell streaking into another pathetic tank of the worshipers of the Corpse God. He saw a trickle of blood leak out of one ear of a member of his 'bridge crew' and smiled. Khore cared not from who the blood flowed.

"Your Awfulness" one of his bridge thralls said "several of the enemy tanks appear to be forming a rough circle around us."

Xenal'vene looked at the map. His baneblade was currently moving through a gully which was, on the scale of baneblades, small. However, it was enough to provide him with decent cover against the loyalist tanks. They were tenacious; he had to give them that. His vehicle had personally destroyed over a dozen of them, but the fought on and, when they fell back, did so with discipline.

"Sir!" Another of the bridge thralls said "the tank that thwarted our missile attack earlier is here!"

"Destroy it at once!" Xenal'vene shouted "obliterate them!"

"We can't! They're currently covered by the walls of the-" Xenal'vene drew his sidearm, a wickedly spiked hellpistol, and shot the man in the head.

"I'm going above." He announced. Xenal'vene didn't feel like shouting so much anymore; killing people always made him feel better.

_I_ Melvin decided _am crazy_. When he had proposed the plan, he hadn't actually thought that any of the others would go for it. Strangely, at the time, he had thought that it made sense. He looked at the speedometer. The tank was moving at over _seventy_ miles per hour. Mike and Mason had pulled out all the stops.

"Allright, people" he announced, grabbing the latch on the turret hatch "maximize the suspension. I'm going topside."

He said nothing for a moment, as the crew went about their tasks. Then, in a softer voice, he said "It has been a pleasure to serve with you all."

Xenal'vene loved the smell of carnage in the morning. He rode, the top half of his body exposed, in the top hatch of his baneblade.

Across the battlefield, ruined tanks burned and devastated men died. Xenal'vene reveled in the glory for Lord Khorne on his field.

An odd rumbling, roaring sound reached his ears. It was growing closer. He looked to his left, just in time to see something absurd.

One of the Imperial tanks, in fact, the one that had destroyed his missile, appeared, moving faster than a tank had any right to. It hit the edge of the gully, which curved upward slightly, then _took to the air_.

The tank flew over his baneblade on and arcing trajectory, and, at its apex, two large, dark shapes detached themselves from the tank, and fell. The objects fell wildly, but a baneblade was not a small target.

One of the objects landed close enough that Xenal'vene could make out some of the letters on its casing. M...E...

The tank landed on the other side of the gully with a strange, loud thud, but that wasn't important to him. Had he been paying more attention, he might have been surprised to hear that the engine of the tank was in fact still running, carrying it away from him.

_Ruinous Powers_. He thought, in the moment before a wall of flame engulfed him.

The fire rushed across the top of the tank, superheating the ancient metal. A portion of it poured down through the still open hatch, roasting the 'bridge crew' alive. A second later, five high explosive rounds reached the tank and exploded across the near molten top armor.

The _Wrath of Khorne_ had been destroyed.

* * *

Xanthis looked at the holographic table, observing the results of his risky assault. The casualties had been high; of the three hundred tanks of the First Armored, just under two hundred had returned intact. And those that had would need truckloads of replacement parts and the ministrations of a legion of enginseers.

However, they had smashed the chaos force. Hundreds of traitor tanks had been lost, and the rest were retreating south toward the advancing horde of their comrades.

He had lost one battle, but probably won another. He thought of the battleship being constructed outside, and a grim smile touched his face.

This war was _far_ from over.

* * *

**Don't worry, more is on the way. Plus, Summer Is Coming. That means I should be able to produce either longer or more frequent chapters. I stole a bit of my opening note from TheDemonGroceryStore's 'Leloch of the Abridged'. Great series. TDGS, if you're reading this, mean it in good fun.**

**Also, once this Chaos stuff is finished, I think the next encounter arc is going to be either Eldar or Tau. Leave a review as to your thoughts as to which.**

**Until next time.**


	6. Chapter Not 13

**Hello and welcome back to **_**Serneldra Rising**_**. I have prepared a larger than usual helping for you viewing pleasure today, so enjoy.**

**By the way, defense combat from a prepared position is apparently really boring to write, so this chapter was kinda tough. I apologize if, as a result of that, the quality of this work has dropped from its usual vomit inducing standard.**

**Also, I am still taking suggestions as to this story, and would especially enjoy feedback on which characters you people would like to be fleshed out more, or what new POVs you might like to see.  
**

**I have no witty commentary, just read it.**

* * *

Clayton grimaced, looking down the gentle incline toward the horizon. A wide open field stretched from horizon to horizon. He stood in the very first trench line of the Crown Legion, and the enemy was coming.

Above him, the gray clouds of early winter overcast the battlefield. It seemed fitting, somehow.

No one said anything. The last of the trenches had been finished an hour ago. Clayton ran his hand nervously over the railgun hanging from the combat harness on the front of his pseudo-active suit.

The Serneldran ground forces had been deployed in a long arc around the perimeter of a basin surrounding the mouth of the pass from which the Chaos forces poured. The Crown Legion had been placed near the top of the arc, where the most intense attack was expected to occur.

To the south, a line of specks appeared, rapidly growing larger. Clayton looked at them through the sight on his gun. They were the Chimeras that had been deployed to scout, returning more than two hours early.

And there was really only one reason that would be happening.

Clayton checked the grenade launcher on his railgun; it looked good.

He shifted into a slightly less comfortable, but more effective, firing position. He had seen battle before, survived, and won. He was more experienced, and _vastly_ better equipped than any of those times.

However, he tried not to think about how much longer the odds were this time.

* * *

Lieutenant Lloyd felt a shiver of nervousness as the Revenant dropship shuddered. The mission briefing said that the enemy had 'very light' anti-aircraft capabilities. That was a cold comfort for him, though, given that the Revenant was a two-month-old, barely tested system.

In the forward transport bay, the Armored Combat Suit, or ACS, troopers were preparing in the front compartment. They were normal humans under the armor, and their suits, whilst not on the level of those of the Astartes, were still formidable.

The ACS suits covered the entire bodies of the troopers. They consisted of rigid plates of adamantium and ceramite, as well as other strange materials Freya produced. A series of nanomaterials ran under that, reinforcing the armor, as well as increasing the wearer's strength and speed, as well as interfacing with the wear, allowing unprecedented control for a person with no Black Carapace.

Intriguing as those suits were, they were not his method of combat. He turned around to look at his warhorse in the rear bay. It stood a hair under five meters tall, and weighed in at just over eight tons. The armored carapace of the machine was currently colored the sky blue and burnished silver of Serneldra.

He walked up to the feet of the massive humanoid war machine. Despite the superficial similarities, it was nothing like an Imperial Guard sentinel. It retained much more of its humanoid shape, and the cockpit was located behind the shoulders, and had no view canopy that exposed the pilot to enemy fire.

Also, it had arms.

With his system, Lloyd was pretty sure he could rip through a squad of sentinels. His was faster, tougher, and better armed, which pretty much defined superior in a war machine.

The feet were, oddly enough, as different as the rest of the body was from any other Imperial walker. In fact, calling it a walker at all wasn't entirely accurate. On even ground, it employed some form of powered 'wheels' on the feet to move. It seemed ridiculous, but considering everything he had learned in his Know Thine Enemies class, it was far from the most ridiculous thing in the galaxy. In any case, Freya had explained that it used several other effects to make that possible, largely something called 'ground effect'. Lloyd figured that he should just shut up and enjoy the ride.

The Revenant shook again. He really had no idea what had caused it.

"Attention all passengers," the pilot said over the vox "we will soon be reaching our destination. Please prepare for possible hostile insertion."

With that, Lloyd climbed the ladder up to the mounting platform to board his machine. He could have entered the cockpit directly via grapple, but this was easier. At the top of the platform, the cockpit chair extended out of the bulge on the back where cockpit proper was located.

He sat down in the control chair, taking note of the comforting thickness of the armor around the cockpit. As he activated the machine, the chair slid smoothly into the body of the machine. As the armor plate at the back of the cockpit dropped into place and sealed, a series of semi-holographic displays lit up, giving a panoramic view of the cargo hold, as well as showing various readouts on the status of the system.

Lloyd spent several minutes going down the pre-mission checklist. After he was about halfway through his second repetition of the list, the lights in the cargo bay went red, and a harsh klaxon blared from the vox speakers.

"Twenty seconds to launch," a cool, flat feminine voice said. Lloyd gripped the complex double controls, bracing himself.

Eighteen seconds later, Lloyd dropped. The plate hold his walker retracted, and he fell from the Revenant into hell.

* * *

Xanthis looked at the display of his new command center. His battle plan, like the best of them, was simple. Until this point in the war, he had saved an ace in the hole, his ACS and Mobile Knights, or Knightmares, as he had decided to call them. Apparently, someone on the design team had picked the name after something in a very early M3 entertainment program Freya had stored.

The plan for the battle was, like the best, fairly simple. The majority of the Crown Legion, about forty thousand, along with a hundred thousand PDF levies, would contain the enemy army before they could spread further on the plains. Then, the ACS would be deployed to take and hold the pass. They would be supported by Revenant dropships, along with Vultures for fire support. If they could hold long enough, the northern force could be destroyed, allowing the Crown Legion to reinforce the ACS.

Then, of course, were plans B and C.

Xanthis looked at the men and women of the operations center. Like himself, every person in the command center had bloodshot, shadowed eyes. In the week or so since the beginning of the crisis, most of them had been up nearly around the clock.

The stakes, as so far as anyone else in the command center knew, were the lives, and possibly souls, of forty billion humans. However, Castella was absent, and she was one of the few people Xanthis knew understood Freya's full significance, and what it would mean if the complex fell into enemy hands.

* * *

"And that, Lord-Fabricator," Nichols concluded, "is why we have to help the Serneldrans."

"Brother, you overstep yourself," the Lord-Fabricator said. "The fact of the matter is, you haven't produced sufficient proof that Governor Xanthis isn't a heretek." The Lord-Fabricator stood to address the other assembled techpriests. Nichols was debating the Lord-Fabricator in the meeting hall of the Mechanicus Consulate on Serneldra IV. "Brothers, I see no logical reason why we should continue this discussion."

Nicholas tried another approach. "Simply give me the control keywords to Skitarii detachment," he said, gesturing with the wide variety of cybernetics grafted on to various parts of his body. "That way, I can take them to provide Freya, who is surely an avatar of the Machine God, with an honor guard, as is fitting."

"That," another techpriest, one of Nicholas' rank, said, his cybernetics moving in a way that was the Machine Priesthood's equivalent of a shrug "seems rather excessive, does it not?"

"Your statement is illogical," Nicholas retorted, using the pattern of speech preferred by the higher-ranking members of the Mechanicus "and conflicts with previously established precedent. Titan Legions have been mobilized on prior occasions as honor guards for less substantial finds."

"Ah, but Nicholas," a different techpriest said, leaning back in his chair "an average Titan Legion consists of usually between thirty and forty units. The detachments of the Tech Guard we command here number in the thousands."

_Omnissiah protect you and your men, Xanthis_ Nichols thought _for I don't know if I can convince these fools to honor our obligations._

* * *

Steven West of the Crown Legion ACS hit the ground running. His drop pack softened his impact to one that would merely have broken a man's legs, and his armor absorbed the rest. He reached to his back and drew out his Mark 16 Heavy Combat Magnetic Impeller. He leveled the railgun, pressed it into his shoulder plate, and began to search for targets and cover.

For the moment, no foes presented themselves for smiting. Overhead, the Revenant dropships rotated slowly, ascending, a barrage of fire coming from their various weapon mountings. As West watched, a hail of missiles issued forth from the dropship that had deployed his squad, streaking toward a target over the horizon.

Unfortunately, he knew that they couldn't stay long. West moved to find his squad. From what he had heard, in a normal guard regiment, after such a rushed drop deployment, the troops would be in chaos. Thankfully, his suit was able to help. It possessed several translucent arrows over his vision, showing him the direction to his squad, battalion command, and other helpful locations.

West 'walked' to the location his squad had been assigned to defend. Calling it a walk was not particularly accurate, as he would have easily outpaced most non-gene enhanced human sprinters. As he arrived at the area his squad had been assigned to defend, an elevated stone mound overlooking the southern approach, west felt a powerful tremor shake the ground around him, accompanied by a low roar. Several pieces of stone struck his armor, clattering to the ground.

The squad had detonated a cratering charge. Normally, hard stone would be practically impossible to dig into on such short notice. The cratering charges were the answer to this, creating ready cover easily, if somewhat imprecisely.

As West began to form up with his squad, the first of the Revenants began to boost away from the battlefield. The airbase was some distance away, and they were flying the dropships dangerously overweight and under fueled.

The Revenant was a wonderful system. Some of the senior members of the squad said that the deployment would have been suicide in Valkyries. Despite their lack of heavy anti-air weapons, the enemy had plenty of shoulder-fire systems. A lucky hit from one would kill a Valkyrie, but the much larger Revenant could shrug off the small rockets.

Twelve hundred ACS troopers and two dozen Knightmares had been deployed on top of a rocky ridge through the pass. The road had run over the ridge, but the preparatory aerial bombardment had ended that, along with the lives of every enemy within a few miles of the ridge.

That had bought them some time, but the enemy would be along soon enough.

And then it would be time to die.

* * *

Xanthis looked at the holographic strategic display. The enemy had been engaging the northern defensive line for some time now, and was about to hit the ACS and Mobile Cavalry. He narrowed his eyes. A small red arrow labeled 'UNKNOWN' had appeared, crossed his line, and struck the enemy.

* * *

The first cultist, along with twenty or so of his closest friends, had no idea what hit him. Several balls of plasma struck a group tightly packed cultists, obliterating them. A moment later, a red-and-silver humanoid machine crested the hill that it had used as cover while firing. It slid up, head-mounted sensors searching for targets.

Kalinia Sharvane had arrived on the battlefield.

* * *

Clayton fired a grenade from the launcher on his rifle. It flew true, and obliterated a group of rebels on impact. Unfortunately, more simply stepped up to take their places. There were always more to replace the ones he killed.

He fired a burst from his railgun. He could say how many he had struck down, but the fighting had been going on for hours now. There were two things that had so far prevented them from ending up like the First PDF group. One of them was the enormously successful armored attack earlier, which had taken away the enemies metal boxes of mobile cover.

The entire world shook. Clayton winced as the blast wave from several earthshaker rounds detonating nearby rushed over him. He looked back up at the ground in front of the trench. The second thing keeping them alive was the artillery.

The artillery strike had devastated the wave of oncoming cultists, but they had already crossed much of the ground the strike had cleared.

Clayton continued to lay down fire. The enemy had been drawing closer all day. _How_ he thought_ do they manage to keep up this attack? How can they get so many people to just die like this_?

"Sarge! Sarge!" Clayton turned as the shouts of his vox man brought him out of his reprieve. The man was gesturing to his field unit. "Sir," he said "we just got orders to prepare to pull back to the next trench line."

Now this was an interesting situation. Performing a controlled retreat or withdrawal under fire was one of the hardest field maneuvers an army could attempt. If done improperly, soldiers could simply break instead of falling back. Oftentimes, the Guard would simply keep men in unholdable positions rather than pull them back, and have them die in place in exchange for time to reinforce the next defensive line.

"Why didn't you tell the lieutenant, soldier?" Clayton shouted back.

"He's dead sir," the man responded "you're in charge."

"Great," Clayton muttered. Then, in a much louder voice, he said, "tell the heavy bolter team. Make sure they're ready to move."

The man nodded, running down the trench to comply. Clayton grimaced.

This was going to be bad.

* * *

Felix looked at his map. So far, he couldn't really tell if the plan was working or not. The pressure on the line had been fierce, and several segments of the line held by the normal PDF had nearly been overrun. However, the Crown Legion, which was holding the main road to the north, was holding well, despite the fact that it was weathering the worst attack of any of the northern line units.

Despite that, the northern line was, by and large, holding. Cut off from their continuous stream of bodies from overrun settlements, they would soon exhaust themselves if they continued attacking at their current pace. However, if they failed to make a breakout, their abysmal logistics would ensure that they would starve.

Then, of course, there was the ACS. They had been inserted into the pass, and had just begun to make contact with the enemy. That was an entirely separate matter. They would take hideous casualties, but it was imperative that they hold as long as possible.

He looked at the four icons representing Serneldra's stock of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. He had no idea why the previous governor had had them, or where he had gotten them. Not that that mattered. Each of the missiles was equipped with a devastating plasma warhead, but they were too imprecise to use as tactical weapon, and the limited supply meant that Xanthis was keeping them in reserve.

Felix could guess why.

* * *

The signal arrived at the front lines. Clayton braced himself; an instant later, a barrage of shells landed in front of the trenches. With a cry of 'FOR THE EMPEROR', the soldiers surged out of the trenches.

As Clayton and his squad rose, one man was struck in the head, and dropped. Clayton took what he was pretty sure was a lasgun beam in the chest, but the breastplate of his pseudo-active armor stopped it easily.

Clayton began to backpedal, sweeping his railgun horizontally, firing occasionally, mostly random shots to suppress the enemy. The squad stayed low, moving backwards.

"Hey," one soldier shouted "It _is_ nice to be able to get some fresh air."

"Yea," Clayton shouted back "make sure you keep your head down."

Another man dropped, and the conversation jovial died.

Clayton dropped his rail rifle into its harness and withdrew a pair of binoculars. He crouched down behind a lump in the ground and began to survey the enemy. He saw that several large blobs of the enemy men had formed, and appeared to be moving forward.

"Gentlemen," Clayton announced "looks like they're massing for a charge. Vox, get that back to headquarters; see if we can't get some big guns on these bastards."

The squad dispersed down into depressions in the ground. The heavy weapons squad set up to fire. The wave of enemies was growing closer. There were thousands of cultists facing them. No one said anything, but they all knew that without a heavy bombardment, they were all dead men.

The enemy had reached the abandoned trench line and paused there for a moment. "As soon as they stand up," Clayton shouted "we open fire. We don't move back until we get a covering barrage. I don't know where the nearest commissar is, but if you stand up, I assure you that the enemy will do his job for him."

The cultists emerged a few moments later, laying down a hail of scathing but poorly aimed lasgun fire. The squad returned fire with their railguns, but that seemed pitifully insufficient against the tide of coherent light rushing over them.

The first of the enemy was about a hundred yards away when the first artillery strike took him.

* * *

Melvin sat on the rim of his tank's turret. "You know," he said "I feel terrible. We're just sitting here while the crunchies are out there getting killed."

Mark looked up from the book he was reading, a story from Freya's archives about metal eating Psykers who were rebelling against some who sounded suspiciously similar to the Emperor. "I don't know, do we really want to be out there?"

Maria poked her head out of the turret hatch. She had rigged up a method for using the tank's viewscreens, battlespace awareness monitors, and other devices to play simulations. "I wouldn't really mind," she said, shrugging "I could go for killing something right now. Plus, I really wanted to see what these flechette launchers could do."

"Eviscerate any of those idiots who gets within range of the tank," Mason said, his voice issuing out from under the tank. He was modifying something, although he never really bothered to explain what he was doing to the rest of the crew. "I'm glad we got to test out the new laser system, though." He continued "but I'm glad we're out of combat. With the amount of data we can collect from a live firing, I'm going to be busy for a while recalibrating."

"Not that any of that matters, of course." Melvin said "we pretty much blew our suspension when we pulled that stunt to kill that baneblade. We're not going anywhere till spares come in."

* * *

West fired a long burst from his railgun into a group of cultists attempting to charge up the ridge. As around half the group, which numbered in the teens, dropped, he ducked behind an outcropping of rock to take cover from the hail of return fire. While his armor could probably shrug off the lasgun bolts, being careful killed people somewhat less often that impulsiveness.

He grabbed a grenade off an anchor on his belt and rolled out from behind the outcropping and tossed it, finishing the group.

He kept moving, strafing the mob of the assaulting cultists. He continued firing, watching the various displays on the inside of his helmet. The casualties on the side of the defenders had been staggering; four of West's original squad of twelve were listed as casualties.

Bad as it had been, the carnage for the traitor forces had been worse still. The carnage on the slopes of the ridge was simply indescribable. The heavy railguns used by the ACS troopers were murder on unarmored flesh, and the field was littered with the bodies of heretics who bore proof of that.

Even worse were the spots where the Knightmares had fought. The machines of the Mobile Cavalry carried even heavier weapons, and the foe swarmed them like moths to a flame.

And like moths drawn by fire, they burned.

In one spot, the components needed to build several dozen cultists were strewn across an area the size of a barracks room. The blood pooled thick on the ground there, enough that a Knightmare crossing it actually threw up rooster tails of blood behind its wheeled feet.

It was glorious.

West was simply concerned that the enemy could take it.

He moved a short distance across open ground to rejoin his squad. It would have been hazardous unarmored, but the speed granted by his suit allowed him to make the crossing before the enemy could draw a bead on him.

West ducked into the pit his squad was occupying. Those of them that were left, anyway. He activated his coms to the other members of the squad. "They're everywhere," he sent "They're making it up the hill."

"Command knows that" the sergeant said "they've got the Revenants coming back in loaded for 'nid, but with the traitors coming in so close, they can't use their heavy weapons. We can get some support, but we need to push them down the hill so they can cut loose."

"So," West said "we're doing a charge?"

"That's pretty much the plan."

* * *

A brief time later, several canisters fired by one of the heavy support Knightmares landed in front of the line, engulfing scores of the cultists in a cloud of promethium. The men of the ACS surged out of their trenches in the wake of the hellish blast. They charged forward, brief flashes of white fire leaping from the muzzles of their railguns.

West charged into the cloud of hot smoke and through a patch of smoldering promethium. Normally, he would be dead, but the suit's active heat dispersal system prevented it from being more than a nuisance.

As he cleared the smoke cloud, West charged headfirst into a knot of heretics. While the traitors recovered from their shock, he returned his rail rifle to his back clamp and drew his sword. It was a blade three and a half feet long, composed of ultrastrong battlesteel and synthetics, honed to a nanoscale edge. Its cutting power was further enhanced by a power field narrowly projecting around the striking surfaces of the weapon.

The first cultist dropped his rifle and reached for his knife. West took his head off before he could get it up. The sword was quite convenient; unlike a regular sword, it _could_ cut bone without substantial difficulty.

West spun into another man and rammed his blade into his gut, and, as he withdrew the weapon, kicked another traitor. While that normally would have required a lethal finishing move, but this particular situation was different.

Once West had finished the group, he rushed ahead to catch up with the rest of his team. They continued down the hill, making extensive use of cover to avoid the attacks that their armor couldn't block. As they descended, the squad remained in a tight defensive box formation. None of them could explain what it was, but the sergeant, who had seen combat before his transfer to the ACS, swore that something felt wrong about the battle.

When they had nearly reached the bottom of the slope, a group of cultists, larger than normal, rushed the squad. West laid down a base of fire as several of his squad mates drew melee weapons. They dropped the first few traitors that reached them with relative ease, when a tall, red-skinned humanoid stepped out from behind a cultist and struck one of the ACS troopers in the chest with a long, golden sword.

The man dropped wordlessly, and the rest of the group began to retreat. The red monster swung its weapon and dropped another ACS trooper. The squad continued to fall back. Eventually, they reached a position where another squad was capable of providing them with covering fire. With that benefit, the squad's heavy weapons man was able to drop the red thing, but not before it absorbed much more fire than seemed physically possible.

The monster fell, and its body began to fly apart, each piece disappearing in harsh flash of blood red light.

West looked at where the thing had fallen. Several warnings and alerts were flashing across his vision, information flashing faster than he could process it.

As he skimmed the alerts, West realized that his worst fears had materialized.

The Daemons of Khorne had arrived on the battlefields.

* * *

In the shipyard in orbit around Constantinople, the fast battleship _Spirit of Serneldra_ was being launched ahead of schedule. She was, of course, grossly unfinished. She had no warp drives yet installed, and her void shields were functionally non-operational. The tracking systems that would allow her weapons to track and engage enemy starships with even a prayer of connecting in the vast blackness of space. Just over a fifth of her internal spaces were pressurized, though about half of that consisted of pockets of a few chambers and a couple of passageways that had needed to be filled with atmosphere to allow work too delicate to be done in spacesuits to proceed.

Only an extremely small fraction of her armor had been attached, though several of the yard technicians had joked that she could probably absorb more fire with the impairment of major systems, if only because she was a skeleton of ceramic, adamantium, and battlesteel, lacking much in the way of major systems to sustain damage.

All down the long skeleton, hastily placed explosive bolts detonated, slicing apart support beams that, in a sane universe, should have stayed in place. Umbilical cables separated from their ports, some spewing their excess contents of volatiles to freeze and dissipate in the cold vacuum of space.

Long liner magnetic accelerators pushed the ship forward, and slowly, ponderously, she cleared her berth. Once she had gained sufficient distance, her own massive onboard gyroscopes began to spin, aiding the maneuvering thrusters in bringing the ship about. Once she had achieved the appropriate bearing, the _Spirit of Serneldra_ ignited her massive engines and began to accelerate.

* * *

"One point two five gravities," the helmsman called out, his voice shaking "one point five gravities."

Xanthis looked at the instrument panel in front of him. He was sitting in the admiral's seat on the ship, where a commanding officer could survey the situation on his flagship and command his fleet without interfering with the bridge of the ship. Alternatively, it could be used as a place to stow visiting dignitaries where they could feel important and press lots of buttons without bothering the bridge crew. Lastly, it could be used as a place to contain dangerous lunatics that needed to be entertained, such as Inquisitors, while engineered the destruction of planets.

Xanthis knew without a doubt which category he fell into.

On second thought, all these men had agree to fly into space on an unfinished, untested warship that was the first of her class built in more than twenty thousand years, and the first her shipyard had build from the keel up.

"Captain," Xanthis said "what is our estimated time of arrival in orbit around Serneldra VI?"

"That will vary with the rate of acceleration we can achieve, sir." The Commanding Officer replied, turning to face Xanthis. "At the present rate, we should arrive between two and four days from now."

"Understood," Xanthis said in that universal authoritative tone of voice the Guard had taught him. "And Tactical, what are our prospects of being able to conduct our primary mission, that being the execution of orbital bombardment in support of ground forces, once we arrive in Serneldran orbit?"

"Assuming we arrive in one piece," the Tactical Officer said, face blank, "and assuming that there is actually something left to support when we arrive, we should be able to do some good, sir. Also, we better hope that no hostile warships larger than a corvette show up; we can't shoot other ships with much in the way of accuracy, and we sure as hel don't have enough in the way of drives to run."

Xanthis nodded and looked back to his strategic plot of the battle occurring on Serneldra IV. The situation on the other planets had mostly stabilized; Wyrmfall had crushed most of the rebellious forces of Serneldra V, and the small population on Serneldra III and the small PDF stockpiles on that planet had ensured that the rebellion there had never really gone anywhere.

However, on Serneldra IV, the battle still balanced on a knife edge. The Northern line was holding, the fifty thousand Crown Legion troops and around a hundred thousand PDF levies were presenting themselves well against the enemy there.

However, then there was the ACS. At least a third of the twelve hundred deployed there were casualties, either killed or debilitatingly wounded. The line there was holding, if only just. The Mobile Cavalry also played a large part in that; their machines were death to the swarms of maddened rabble.

However, reports were flooding in that the enemy had begun summoning daemons into the battle, and the early returns were not good. The reason the ACS had held out so long in such a seemly hopeless situation was the simple fact that the vast majority of the heretics simply didn't possess the weapons to easily harm the suits head-on, and most had lost too much of their higher order thinking capabilities to devise a strategy to take down the armored troopers with what they had.

What wasn't readily clear to Xanthis was why the enemy had not simply begun summoning daemons immediately. So far, the largest factor behind the successes his forces had had in the battles so far was that they had been able to bring superior forces against fractions of the enemy armies. He had sent superior tanks against the enemy armor when it was deprived of its infantry screen and had won, and he was winning so far forcing them to spread their forces and charge prepared defensive positions held by superior troops. However, with the right strategic deployment of daemons, the foe could have easily changed all that.

Xanthis felt a cold pit in his stomach when he realized that they very well still could.

* * *

A jet of plasma flashed from the shoulder mounted projectors on the Knightmare, flashing the cultists to ash and bone. In the cockpit of the machine, Kalinia grinned. "Burn, heretics," she muttered, searching her scanners for further targets. "Feel the cleansing flame of the Emperor's holy Inquisition."

Kalinia twisted her controls. He machine spun, then charged at the nearest group of the enemy. As she approached, the massive power sword mounted on the right arm of her Knightmare came to life, sheaths of ethereal blue energy flickering across the blade.

The red and silver monster struck the cultists with the ferocity and surprise of a storm in the Warp. Kalinia swung her sword, killing two of the cultists instantly, nearly cutting them in half. She raised the right arm of her machine and cut loose with the heavy laser mounted there. Simultaneously, she flared her legs out, killing the velocity of her charge and spinning her machine around, sweeping the lower bodies of several cultists out from under them.

Kalinia eyed the temperature gauge for her plasma guns. These new patterns were somewhat more stable than the standard Imperial pattern, but frequent or repeated use could still easily lead to the weapons overheating. She figured that it would probably be safe for another shot, so she pressed the firing studs and released a hail of ultrahot gas onto the traitors.

* * *

The engineseer overseeing the maintenance crew gave Lloyd the thumbs up. He activated the drivers on his Knightmare, propelling it out of the pit the repair team had set shop in. As he reached the top of the mound of rock that provided the pit additional cover, he scanned the reports.

The situation wasn't good.

Previously, the combination of the ACS and Mobile Cavalry had been holding the pass, if only just. Now, however, the situation appeared to be changing on both sides of the ridge, though the south front, which was his destination, was much worse.

It seemed impossible. Monsters out of the stories of children and the nightmares of men had appeared on the battlefield. _Dear Emperor_, he thought, _please protect me_.

He drove his machine up another, taller, hill a short distance away. As he reached the top, he worked quickly, bringing his shoulder mounted lascannons online. He picked what appeared to be a rather large demon out of a crowd, and then fired.

Twin lines of angry red light traced themselves in an instant from the shoulders of Lloyd's machine to the body of the red monstrosity. As the beams faded, one of the more esoteric sensors mounted on the machine registered a burst of exotic energy, apparently confirming the kill.

As Lloyd scanned the sensor report, he dropped his machine back behind the hill. An instant later, a hail of fire filled the space around where he had just stood. He grimaced as the cockpit shook with the impact of some type of heavy weapon, but thankfully it didn't penetrate.

A second after the barrage had passed, the same sensor that had registered the kill of the daemon registered another contact, a fraction of a second before a massive bolt of energy drove itself into the side of the hill, flinging up a massive plume of dust and fragments of stone.

"The hel," Lloyd muttered, searching for the source of the attack.

A few seconds later, another bolt appeared. This time, it struck the machine of a Mobile Cavalry soldier. The machine flashed as a causality, and Lloyd hoped that the mass of the machine had absorbed enough of the attack to allow the pilot to survive.

With the second bolt, it was much easier for Lloyd to calculate the source of the fire. He turned his machine, lowering its head and torso to present a smaller target. He took off, his machine sliding in a rough zig zag pattern to evasion.

A third bolt struck the ground just to the right of Lloyd's Knightmare. As the dust plume from the impact cleared, Lloyd could finally make out the source of the fire.

It was a _thing_, almost certainly a daemon, which stood just taller than the height of a man. Its... body was covered a shade that, for the sake of his sanity, Lloyd called blue. The thing, daemon, was riding on a bladed disc that hung several feet above the ground, a cloud of ethereal blue fire trailing from its underside.

The daemon raised what was unmistakably a staff clutched in its cruel mockery of a hand. As it held the weapon out, a swirling column of blue fire appeared, rushing toward Lloyd's machine.

He spun, twirling his machine just barely out of the path of the attack, which left a path of scorched earth and stone behind it. The sensor, which Lloyd now realized must be a device to detect sorcerous energies, was registering contacts almost nonstop.

As the daemon recovered from its spell, Lloyd raised the minibolter mounted on the arm of his machine. The minibolter was a weapon that was, at its base, an unholy fusion of a bolter, an assault cannon, and a railgun. The weapon used a set of revolving barrels fitted with linear accelerators, which used an electromagnetic impulse to propel standard bolter ammunition out the barrel, then ignite its rocket motor just as it left the barrel.

As a result, the weapon was able to avoid the buildup of hot gas in the barrel, a common flaw of bolters. It also reduced heat and stress on the critical components of the weapon, allowing it to achieve a superlative rate of fire.

Lloyd pulled the trigger. A stream of high velocity chunks of metal, each brierley trailing a thin contrail of rocket exhaust, streaked between warmachine and daemon. Several were deflected off some invisible barrier, but the tail of the burst breached the shield and struck the daemon.

As the monster reeled on its disc, Lloyd prepared himself for the next attack. It came sooner than he had expected; a barrage of purple bolts of energy that issued from the tip of the staff, almost in imitation of his previous attack.

Several struck the front of the Knightmare. Lloyd scowled as he watched damage reports appear on his monitors. _I've got to find a way to end this_ he thought. He fired a blast from his lascannons, which went wide as he scrambled to avoid the next attack.

Man and monster danced, almost taking turns to exchange bursts of daemonic energy and blessed steel. Lloyd managed to clip the monster with his lascannon, but took a hit from another energy attack in the process.

Finally, Lloyd found an opening. As the daemon was performing some longer and more complex spell, he fired his lascannons at the ground below the disc. It shied upward, exposing its belly.

Lloyd smiled, a cruel grin that came nowhere near reaching his eyes. In a flash, he raised his minibolter and fired a long burst, shredding the construct. As the disc came apart beneath it and the horror fell, it turned something almost resembling a face toward the sensors on Lloyd's machine, surprise and hatred mixed in equal parts.

The thing fell on the ground and writhed, shifting franticly. It had been wounded by the fire that had destroyed its disc. Lloyd moved his machine forward, looking at the thing on his monitors.

Then he raised the right foot of his Knightmare and brought it down on the daemon's face. The thing writhed for a moment, then Lloyd fired the ground effect drivers on the foot and it went still.

* * *

"Well," Xanthis said, looking at the data feed from the ACS battle on Serneldra IV "he actually did it."

The rest of the crew of the makeshift command center and bridge were all amazed, even more than Xanthis was. The Mobile Cavalry trooper had actually managed to drop a daemonic herald. That was impressive to Xanthis, and anyone else who knew the capabilities of the Knightmare he was using, and was downright miraculous to anyone who didn't. The fact that most of them hadn't even known that daemons actually existed a few hours ago only added to the effect.

"Actually" one of the bridge officers said "they're not quite out of the woods yet, sir."

"What do you mean?" Xanthis said, turning.

"Our sensor feeds indicate that there is a large unit of daemons moving in on the position held by the ACS, fast." Another bridge tech said.

"Do we have any assets in the area that could even the odds somewhat?"

"I believe that something of the sort could be arranged."

* * *

Apikaron, Daemonic Herald of Khorne, marched, leading his band of bloodletters into battle. For incomprehensible reasons, this particular daemon thought of itself as male. His train of thought would have, of course, have been completely incomprehensible to a human or human-like intelligence, but generally consisted of: 'KILL', 'MAIM' and 'BURN', choose two.

In this particular situation, that normal state was mixed with anticipation for the coming battle, a strange emotion for an entity generally accustomed to the timeless state of the Warp, and concern with keeping his troops in line.

He had learned, in the strange way that daemons do, that the enemy awaiting him at the end of the march was quite formidable, and that it had already banished several daemons back to the Warp. That did not concern him, though; he was incapable of what a mortal would have called fear, and his kind was naturally hardwired to desire bloody battle.

He was quite right not to be concerned by that, though, as, unbeknownst to him, he really had much bigger things to worry about.

* * *

Several miles away, a signal arrived at the formation of Revenants flying to aid the ACS position.

The aforementioned signal instructed one of the pilots to discharge several of his ground-attack missiles at a given coordinate. That didn't particularly concern him; his craft was flying overweight, and losing the weight of the missiles might give him a couple of seconds of breathing room. He flicked several switches.

Outside, four hatches opened on the skin of the dropship, and a standard L25 ground attack missile was launched out of each of them. They each possessed target data beamed up to them by a spotter on the ground, and the missiles needed nothing more to complete their mission.

* * *

On the ground, Apikaron was practically salivating, or would be if such a thing were even remotely possible. He was nearly at the battle, and he felt that it would be better than he had anticipated. Many skulls would be taken for the Blood God here, and he was literally incapable of caring that the vast majority of them would come from servants of Chaos.

Better yet, he had learned that one of those cowardly bird-sorcerers had fallen on this field. When the battle was over, he would have to track that deamon down and tell it that-

Something was wrong. Apikaron couldn't tell exactly what it was, but-

* * *

West watched as the missiles approached the crowd of daemons. He had been ordered ahead to spot for the strike. He didn't like it, and not just because he had been deployed so far into enemy territory alone, with his own line failing.

No, being this close to these daemons was _wrong_ somehow. Around them, he felt angry at nothing in particular. He was muttering prayers of protection under his breath, and they had help him avoid the worst of it.

The missiles arrived. West ducked down behind the stone formation he was using as cover just before they hit, and an enormous sound and overpressure wave rolled over him.

A second later, he returned to a firing position. All but one of the daemons had fallen to the attack, the one appearing to be their leader. A burst of railgun slugs changed that.

West bean to clear his position. The newly minted daemonslayer wanted be gone before someone showed up to investigate the source of the shots.

* * *

_When if first you don't succeed, call in an airstrike._

-Imperial thought for the day.

**Like I said, no witty commentary. You can all go home after you leave a review.**


	7. Chapter avg(2d6)

**Another chapter down. This one was kinda hard to write, so I appoligize if it sucks. It's mostly groundwork for the Big Ultimate Epic Showdown (for this arc) that's coming up next episode.**

* * *

Glacin, sorcerer of Chaos, looked at the incredibly detailed table showing the northern front of the campaign, his region of command. The tabletop was made of simple wood, but several daemons bound within it allowed it to reflect the terrain for several hundred miles around with incredible detail.

To be honest, though, the thing was more trouble than it was worth. The daemons bound in the device were rebellious, to such an extent that controlling them left little time to actually use the... _damned?_ _What would I call it_? Glacin thought. Technically, he was already damned, so would using the term as actually be complementary? _So would I call it Blessed? Sacred?_

As usual, Glacin was confused. He had risen in the Chaos 'hierarchy', such as it was, through force of ability, rather that devotion to the dark gods. He looked more closely at the table display. In the beginning, his orders had been simple. Throw the bodies of the devotees at the loyalist defenses until they broke, throw more bodies to keep them running as long as possible, then repeat.

In recently, however, the situation had become more complicated. The loyalist and their suits had taken the southern pass, and the loss of the flow of bodies was not starving his 'army'.

It was asphyxiating it.

What's more, his masters were insisting that he continue the attack. The side of Chaos would ultimately win, that was simply a matter of numbers. The governor had some nice toys, and his personal army was a much better force than many of the treasonous elites were willing to admit. Despite that, Chaos simply had quite literally more bodies on the planet than the governor had railgun rounds.

From outside his command tent, a sound, a sort of squishing, along with the sound of bones cracking, filled the air. Some 'lucky' fool receiving a mutagenic 'gift' from his patron, no doubt. The degree to which the sounds indicating the person was being changed was oddly extreme, but-

A blade flashed, and a section of the front of the tent fell away. On the other side stood a tall figure clad in black armor and hold a long, shiny sword, one that seemed to have a strange, indescribable oddness about it. It held some strange, pistol-like weapon in its other hand. Looking more closely at the figure, Glacin realized that it was clearly female, or at least wearing armor designed to give that impression.

The assassin began to move toward him. The last thing he thought before the shining blade took him was a hope that the assassin would kill the table too.

* * *

"Well" Xanthis said, looking at the latest updates from the front "this is new."

It was a truly interesting development. Apparently, the commander of the Chaos forces on the northern front was assassinated, which, combined with the lack of reinforcements they were suffering, was causing the foe to collapse on the northern front.

"Yes," Felix said slowly "it is." The functional commander of the Serneldran PDF was not physically present, and was communicating via an astropathic link, although the _Spirit of Serneldra _was close enough to its destination that that wasn't truly necessary.

"You sound like you think that this isn't a positive turn of events." Xanthis said, somewhat confused.

"It's the ACS. If we attack now to break the northern front, and we really have to, they'll pour south, and they'll overrun the position that the ACS is holding. At present, most of the pressure on them has come from the south."

"I've read the reports." Xanthis said, sighing. "As I see it, the only real choice remaining to us is to enact a full-scale push on the northern line while simultaneously withdrawing all surviving ACS and Mobile Cavalry troops."

"Agreed," Felix said. "The only alternative is to sacrifice all remaining troops on the southern front."

"And we might need them later in the campaign," Xanthis lied. His motivations for wishing to preserve the men were entirely different.

* * *

The man, who had once been a mechanic, had long forgotten his name. He had given himself to the Primordial Truth long ago, or at least from his point of view.

Now, he simply maintained the various armored combat vehicles needed for the advance of the servants of his cause. Despite the large armored clash earlier in the week which had destroyed many vehicles, even more remained intact. The mechanic, while he saddened by this on some level, wasn't sufficiently concerned for it to be noticeable to an outside observer, let alone impact his work.

At present, he was performing minor repairs on a 'Leman Russ' battle tank. He found the name distasteful and would have preferred to call it something else, but he lacked the necessary higher order thought functions to think of an alternative.

The mechanic's nose wrinkled. He didn't think it per se, but on some instinctual level, he recognized the smell.

Promethium.

As he continued to work, the scent grew stronger. Eventually, the Mechanic became somewhat concerned. The intensity of the smell could indicate a major fuel spillage. However, the main fuel bunkers were rather far away; it was much more likely that another mindless worker had spilled some fuel. He ignored the smell.

A few minutes passed. The winds had changed, and the scent had faded to a trace. The Mechanic barely remembered it. As a result, when a thin flow of transport, strong smelling liquid snaked past him, he was utterly surprised for a moment.

After that moment of surprise, the Mechanic stopped being able to feel such things, probably due to the fact that he had transformed into a pile of scorched bones scattered across the burning ferrocrete of the maintenance center.

* * *

The Callidus Assassin didn't even bother to turn to observe the effects of her handiwork as the tank park was engulfed in flames. She had ruptured the fuel tanks, and then set bombs to ignite the spillage. It had been easy, too easy really, although that was easily explained. Her training had hammered into her the notion that Chaos warbands, even very large ones, very rarely had anything resembling a chain of command. In the normal course of operations, the warlord who led them made up for this by sheer force of authority.

However, remover him, and the whole thing could fly apart.

So that was what she did.

The incineration of the vehicle pool hadn't been part of her initial mission plan; that had been a simple target of opportunity. Technically that didn't matter, as she was, for the first time in her 'career', operating without direct oversight and mission planning. She had been deployed on live-fire kill missions, but those were practically the Calidius Temple's equivalent of training maneuvers. This was her first 'deep cover' operation.

As she continued to advance, a group of cultists rounded a corner, drew a variety of weapons, and opened fire. The assassin ducked behind cover, drew her neural shredder, and fired.

She waited a few seconds for the heretics to finish dying, and then continued moving, more urgently than before.

* * *

"GENTLEMEN!" Clayton said, addressing the platoon's worth of soldiers assembled before him. "In a few short hours, we will receive orders to commence an advance. By the benevolence of the Emperor, the enemy forces are in disarray. If we hit now, we should break them."

He looked over the assembled soldiers. They were a mixture of Crown Legion and PDF troopers. Pretty much all of the Crown Legion men still had their standard issue equipment; the PDF soldiers were a different story. They were armed with a mixture of las, auto, and rail guns, and several of them had co-opted various pieces of pseudo-active armor, while some had managed to lose even their flak jackets.

As for himself, Clayton had received a field commission and promotion after the events of the retreat. While that motion had met mixed results overall across the front, he, at least, had retained some semblance of order on his section of the front.

"Now," Clayton continued "I know most of you have seen action in this conflict; this will be nothing like any of what most of you have been in. In those engagements, you were fighting in static positions from behind prepared defenses. In this battle, we will be fighting a battle of maneuvers in the open field."

The looks on the faces of the men were a mixed bag. This was going to go poorly.

* * *

Lloyd fired a suppressing burst from his minibolter, allowing a handful of ACS troopers to drop back from the covered positions that they had been occupying. They retreated a short distance, then grabbed onto handles welded onto the legs of his Knightmare for that express purpose.

He began to move back, moving much more slowly than his ground effect would allow. _After all_ he thought ruefully _it wouldn't do to shake off the parasites_.

Despite the name, the relationship between ACS troopers and Mobile Cavalry Knightmares was actually very beneficial to both, at least in this situation. The crunchies got free moving cover and supporting cover, and the Mobile Cavalry was protected from cultists swarming into the 'dead zones' that their weapons couldn't cover. A Knightmare's dead zones weren't as bad as the spots on a titan, but somebody planting a melta bomb on your knee could really ruin your day.

Lloyd moved his machine back behind a mound of rocks. The ACS troopers dismounted and assumed covering positions as Lloyd contacted the regional commander and all surviving Mobile Cavalry Knightmare pilots.

"Commander Stel," He said as the image of the Mobile Cavalry commander appeared on his monitor "what's the situation?"

"As you know," she said "they're going to be pushing the northern enemy force down here soon, and we don't want to be here when they do. They're sending all the Revenants, though," she looked away from the camera and sighed "we really don't need all that lift capacity."

"So are we going to establish preplanned loading zones for the drop ships to come down on, or are we going to have them land and then move to their positions?"

"We will be moving to positions on the west side of the ridge for collection." Stel said "that should allow us to fight clear of the enemy's main axis of advance. There is an elevated region of flat ground there that should be large enough for the Revenants to land."

"And what do you need me to do?" Lloyd asked.

"Stay on your current task. We need you to retrieve the remaining forward deployed ACS units as quickly as possible."

"Understood." The window containing commander Stel's image winked out.

After the situation with the disc daemon, Lloyd had been reassigned to the northern face of the ridge, where the fighting was supposedly less intense, to rest. From what he had seen, the difference seemed academic.

Lloyd brought up his tactical display. It was a map of the area, overlaid with light codes representing friendly units and icons representing enemy units, color coded to represent probability of accuracy.

One friendly light code lay a bit far ahead of the Main Line of Resistance, blinking in a distress pattern. Lloyd went through the motions to confirm it as a valid target,

Lloyd looked over his sensors. He had the sensor that had alerted him to the presence of the daemon, the one that detected sorcerous energies, on a continuous feed to one of his monitors. It limited his options, but he wanted to know if another daemon was going to show up.

Seeing that both that readout and the more conventional scanners came up blank, Lloyd moved out. He began to accelerated, feeding power to the drivers on the feet of his machine. He crouched the Knightmare down as it moved; best that he keep a low profile.

He moved for a short time before a blip appeared on his auspex. Judging by the signature, it was a small unit of enemy 'infantry'. _Still_ he thought, examining the readouts _probably worth eliminating_.

The group of cultists was moving in a low ditch between two stony mounds. Apparently, this group had survived long enough to realize that you _didn't_ want to stick your head up in a mechanized warzone.

That made his job more complicated, but not much harder. Lloyd slid his machine slightly to the side, lining it up with a nicely sloped patch of ground. He considered the situation, and then entered a series of commands.

The right arm of the machine reached back, returning the minibolter to its cradle on the back of his Knightmare. There, a series of autonomous systems grabbed the weapon and drew it into the armored compartment, while a series of devices performed basic checks on the integrity of the weapon. Lloyd reviewed the presented readouts, approved them, and the minibolter cradle closed.

As the arm returned to its normal position, a series of plates slid down from the forearm and locked into place over the knuckles of the 'hand' of the Knightmare. Several internal bolts locked together and, and the more complex electronics came online, a shimmering field of blue fire shimmered into existence around the fist.

Lloyd observed the tactical plot for a moment more, and then decided the time was right. He routed maximum power to his drivers, and his knightmare shot forward. It raced up the slope and continued forward on a ballistic trajectory.

Just before he landed, Lloyd fired his shoulder mounted lascannons. The rays of coherent light reached out toward the heretics. One cut through a man longwise and expended its power on the rock behind him; the other pierced through two heretics before losing coherency.

Lloyd registered the slight tremor of the impact, though the shock absorbers and other, more exotic, systems built into his machine reduced it so far it was barely noticeable. As he recovered from his landing, he raised the rocket launcher on his left arm. It was a better anti-personnel weapon than the lascannons, the shoulder mount was more stable while airborne.

Lloyd launched a rocket and advanced on his ground effect. The missile impacted slightly off target, behind and to the left of, the cultists. While the remaining enemies, perhaps two thirds of the original thirty, began to recover from their shock, Lloyd struck. He swung his power fist in a long arc, striking two of the cultists.

The effect of several hundred pounds of metal cloaked in a disruptive field striking unshielded flesh is... unique.

Bringing his power fist back to a guard position, passing through another enemy's head in the process, Lloyd continued moving through the enemy formation. Backhanding two more heretics as he moved, Lloyd spun his machine around to face the back of the enemy formation.

Keying a few commands, the Lloyd fired his lascannons again, at a lower power level. The blasts tore through two more cultists, killing one and mortally wounding the other. One enemy advanced, using the flash from the blasts as cover. One of Lloyd's monitors focused on him, showing large melta bomb in his hands.

Lloyd brought his power fist down. The traitor, realizing his fate, detonated the bomb. A series of bright flashes overloaded the screens in Lloyd's cockpit, and the sound of the detonations filtered through the layers of armor around the cockpit, rattling Lloyd.

As his displays came back online, Lloyd scanned his status readouts while sliding his machine backwards. The damage was light, though the right arm appeared to be missing.

_So_ Lloyd thought, _that's what happens when you melta bomb a power fist. Interesting_. He raised the missile launcher and fired on the heretics, the missile landing on target and disintegrating the majority of the enemy. As he finished the rest with his lascannons, something occurred to Lloyd.

_You know_ he thought _the Departmento Munitorum probably has a chart somewhere detailing damage sustained versus enemy casualties inflicted as a worthwhile exchange. I wonder what a Knightmare arm is worth_.

Confirming that the immediate area was clear of life, Lloyd continued to move. The enemy battlefield discipline seemed to have degraded further, and other than the first, no enemy groups of larger than ten entered the range of his sensors.

As he approached the embattled ACS units, Lloyd's machine connected to the tac net of the suits, receiving targeting data from them. As the enemy concentrations appeared on his machine, Lloyd brought his machine to a stop and raised his arm mounted missile launcher.

As a rocket cycled into the launch tube, Lloyd calculated the launch angles, made a slight modification, and fired.

* * *

Freya considered the feeds coming in from across the system. The streams from Serneldra III and V were both several minutes old; he had no astropaths to allow her to work around lightspeed delays, and in any event, few could handle the massive volumes of data she required.

At present, several things were clear from his analysis. First of all, an Imperial victory on both Serneldra III and V was all but inevitable. The traitors had stockpiled too few weapons on III, and they had mobilized too few bodies on V, and had failed to account for Wyrmfall's resistance.

However, the situation on IV was much more uncertain. The majority of the Serneldran PDF and Crown Legion forces were there, but the enemy had mobilized more than three times as many people as on the other two worlds combined. They had much more heavy weaponry there, and the numbers to begin summoning daemons.

Freya, one way or another, would not go quietly. She wasn't sure why, but she felt much more attached to Xanthis and his grand vision than she had for any previous operator. In addition, from what she gathered, the forces of Chaos were unlikely to leave her intact, and the probability of her consciousness surviving prolonged control by the enemy was practically zero.

Freya was powered by an enormous geothermal power tap, but the majority of her prodigious energy budget was provided by a series of would be recognizable to a sufficiently skilled techpriest as a matter annihilation plants. They ran on deuterium and helium-3, so the Serneldrans assumed that they were plasma reactors, and Freya had no trouble allowing them to believe that.

At any time, she could, with the right codes and overrides, detonate them in a blast rated in hundreds of kilotons.

With a few hours of preparation, that could be greatly increased.

However, she hoped that wouldn't be necessary. The embryonic battleship approaching would, with luck, turn the tide of the battle. Freya served as more than a simple manufacturing facility, and there was a _very_ good reason she possessed such a formidable self-destruct.

Some of the things in her deepest storage pits truly frightened her. She sat, quiet in analysis, for a few hours. Finally, as the escape shuttles for the ACS and Mobile Cavalry began their descent toward their targets, she reached a decision. She dispatched a servitor into one of the storage pits, and ordered the personnel of the facility to prep a shuttle for launch.

* * *

West laid down a hail of fire with his heavy automatic railgun, watching as the heavy hypervelocity darts ripped through the line of charging traitors. The weapon was technically designated for use against lightly armored vehicles. That didn't bother him the least.

A series of warnings appeared across his view. West ducked behind the rock he was using for cover a fraction of a second before a shoulder-fired rocket struck the top of the rock, presumably intended to suppress the heavy fire. A large, fast moving chunk of stone blown off by the explosion struck his helmet and bounced off.

West was glad he wasn't a Space Marine.

As he recovered, a message flashed across his visor. _So_ he thought _we're retreating on schedule_. He raised the machine gun and fired another burst, then took off running.

The motions of an ACS trooper moving at top speed was rather different from those of any other infantry. They were much faster than most unenhanced humans, and they lacked the grace of Eldar skirmishers and the long stride of the Adeptus Astartes. Instead, they simply moved with long, leaping bounds, like man in a pressure suit moving in low gravity, but infinitely faster.

The movements of the newly rearranged ACS platoon played out on the screen. The long, strung out line of the thirty suited men, disturbing as it was, was a major faction of the barrier standing between the traitor army and safety to the south.

At random intervals, one of the men would turn to lay down a burst of fire, then sprint back to catch up with the rest of the unit.

"Attention all Armored Combat Suit personnel," a voice cut in over the suit communications "this is Melar Stay, commander of the first Revenant dropship wing. We are inbound, estimated time of arrival, fifteen minutes. Sending landing zone data."

A cheer went out over the coms network. _Well_ West thought _looks like we're finally getting out of this helhole_.

The platoon continued its withdrawal. Several times, lasgun blasts or chunks of shrapnel struck West, cutting scratches across dents in the battlesteel surface of his suit. After days of rotating combat, the surfaces were barely visible.

"Alright, gentlemen," the regimental commander said, cutting into the platoon com net "good job getting out of there. Now, we're withdrawing everybody to the landing zones, and we need this unit to cover everybody else while they're loading up."

Fifteen minutes later, as the first shuttle landed, West took a moment away from slaughtering the traitors desperately rushing the loading troops to consider how lucky he was. He considered the Revenant dropship. The fact that it was simply _here_ at all was pretty remarkable. If what he had heard was true, it was standard practice in many parts of the Imperium to simply abandon soldiers sent of forlorn hope missions like this one.

Furthermore, anywhere else, such a rescue would be carried out with Valkyrie VTOLs. They didn't have the Revenant's range or ceiling. They would have had difficulty surviving the insertion, let alone the loading of troops or exfiltration.

West watched as two of the twelve Revenants lifted off and began to boost away. He continued firing, watching as his comrades boarded the shuttles to safety. He had passed the heavy railgun to a man actually trained in its use, and had gone back to using his old rifle.

Sure, he had only had the thing for six months, but still.

He took care to pick the people carrying heavy weapons out of the mob and aim for them specifically. The majority of the cultists, who were only lightly armed, would be unable to present a serious threat to the drop ships until they were well within range of the systems on the landers.

West shot a man carrying a shoulder fired rocket.

As he scanned for another target, three more Revenants lifted off. West watched the dropships rise, cones of light connecting them to the ground as the rebels fired on them. That left seven on the ground, partially loaded.

He smirked as one of the rising dropships rotated and opened up with its multi-barrel bolters, cutting a swath in the advancing wave.

In the lull that followed the aerial assault, several more companies took the opportunity to load while the enemy regrouped. As the charge began again, West opened fire along with the rest of his platoon, edging toward the dropship that would lift him to safety.

Two further ships lifted off.

Several minutes later, as the last five shuttles were lifting off, disaster struck. Two of the cultists had lugged a plasma cannon onto the battlefield and set it up behind a wall of their fallen comrades.

They fired.

The sunlike ball of energy shot across the battlefield, struck one of the external drive stabilizers on a Revenant and exploded.

_Emperor! _West thought _how did I miss that_! He fired a long, undisciplined burst at the cannon team. As he fired, the plasma cannon lost containment. The weapon exploded, burning its operators to ash and devastating everyone around them.

Still, the damage had been done. The other four troopships began to take off.

The enemy closed in around the wounded lander.

* * *

"FRAK!" Melar shouted, looking at the damage readouts on his ship. "Engineering, what's the estimated time for repair?"

"We can't, not without base facilities." Engineering responded. "I can get her off the ground, but it'll take five minutes to cut open the drive and manually rebalance it. Unless you'd like to fly sideways."

* * *

West watched as a shower of rockets from one of the retreating ships blasted holes in the noose of traitors tightening around the remaining Imperials. It wouldn't be enough.

Then an idea came to him.

_I'm insane_ West thought, con

He emptied his magazine at a group of foes, then stowed his rifle and drew his sword. With a cry silenced by his helmet, he drew his sword and charged.

The rear left drive pod of the dropship had been disabled by the strike. West was at the front left, and had to reach the right side of the ship. Unfortunately, the cultists were pushing toward the nose of the aircraft, and he couldn't risk spending the time to go around.

So that left going through.

West charged. He struck the first traitor, who he, with his armor, out-massed several times over. He trampled over the downed man and made a short, quick, stroke through the throat of another. As a woman carrying a meltagun turned to face him, he stabbed her in the chest, and backhanded a fourth cultist with his gauntlet-shod hand.

He continued to advance, though he was slowed dramatically as more enemies turned to pile onto him. One man raised his lasgun, attempting to deflect the blade with the barrel. West's sword struck in a shower of sparks, biting into the weapon and rendering the gun instantly useless.

Unfortunately, West didn't cleave clean through the lasgun. The sword caught on something, and the man holding it twisted it into a vertical position, pushed it to the side and flung it away, leaving west open and disarmed.

After that, two things happened very quickly. First, a large man decided that it would be a good idea to _wrestle_ a man wearing a full Active Suit. However, before West could perform any of the seventeen ways to disable the man from his present position, another cultist, this one a woman, raised a flamer and doused him promethium.

This had two immediate effects. First of all, it incinerated the man clinging to him, which was convenient. However, it also had the effect of covering him in burning prothemium. West screamed and charged forward blindly.

One cultist attempted to bar his path.

He didn't last long.

West cleared the group of heretics, thick black smoke pouring off his flaming armor. Damage reports flickered across his vision, though he could barely see them through the pain of the burns covering his body.

He reached over his shoulder and grabbed his railgun, slotted in a fresh magazine. The Revenant could fly on two pods. He leveled the railgun at the front right engine pod and opened fire. Amazingly, the grenades for his launcher hadn't cooked off, and, as the magnetically propelled hypervelocity darts chewed through the armor on the pod, he fired the grenade launcher, tearing chunks out of the pod.

As he fired his last grenade and his magazine clicked empty, just before the pain from his burns overtook him, Steven West of the Crown Legion ACS saw the Revenant dropship begin to lift off of the ground.

And then, faster than any starship could hope to move, his soul rode to join the Emperor on wave of light.

* * *

"Sir!" The engineer shouted to Melar over his vox feed "someone took out the exterior engine. We should be able to fly."

Melar didn't need to be told twice. He opened all of the exterior landing doors, and the remaining troops covering the retreat swiftly made their way on board.

As the dropship began to shudder with the internal impact of various weapons, Melar yanked the controls back and launched his behemoth into the sky.

* * *

Mark floored the tank's accelerator, sending seventy tons of metal charging forward.

"Target" Melvin shouted "infantry! Range, one hundred yards. Fire flechette launcher!"

"Firing." Mason said, pressing several buttons.

"Hit confirmed" Maria said, looking at her gunsight displays. "Mason, give me a cluster round for the main gun."

Mason grunted, beginning the loading process.

Melvin opened a vox channel to the rest of the tanks participating in the assault. "All units!" He shouted "We're pushing these freaks all the way into the ocean."

The Serneldran Crown Legion First Armored Division moved out.

* * *

Somewhere in the Warp, Thlzhg'guuzzaaeranshhhdhirdhcogccanow, Keeper of Secerts, Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, watched the events unfolding on Serneldra with Displeasure. Fiendwar, and the _thing_ called itself, had sponsored the Lord-Mayor of that world, pulling the strings needed to supply the man with far more resources than he _should_ have needed to conquer a trio of measly backwater worlds.

However, this new governor had stepped in and thrown a wrench in the plan, and the Mayor was too incompetent to figure out a way to salvage the situation.

A surge of anger rose up in the monstrosity. It would resolve this itself.

* * *

Across the bridge of the _Spirit of Serneldra_, alarms began to wail at all stations.

"Captain! Spacetime warp detected!"

"Registering Warp energy spikes!"

"Phenomena intensifying and localizing!"

"Analysis Pattern confirmed blue! It's a Daemon!"

Xanthis sprang to his feet as the cry was echoed by the various bridge personnel. "What type of daemon! Power level? Estimated strength?"

"It's Greater Daemon. Affiliation Slaaneshi." The sensor tech said.

"Well, we're done." The tactical officer said "we have no chance to beat a Greater Daemon."

"We should retreat to Constantinople Base." The logistical officer suggested "maybe we can fix this thing up with a warp drive before the whole system goes to Warp."

"No." A new voice emanating from the bridge vox speakers cut into the conversation "the is a way we can win this."

"Freya?" Xanthis said "What do you mean?"

A door opened, and two servitors walked onto the command bridge holding a large box between them. They set the box, which was taller than a man, on the ground.

"With this" Freya said "You may be able to defeat the daemon, Xanthis." The servitors began to remove the front panel from the box.

As the contents of the box were revealed, a gasp went around the bridge.

Inside the box was a suit of armor. It had the same basic layout as an ACS suit, but the resemblance ended there. There were no ports, wires, or motor bulges, and rather than the joints being covered by flare plates and flexible nanomesh, the gaps were simply covered by smaller interlocking plates.

The armor was colored a slate, gunmetal grey which seemed to shine, somehow. Overall, the whole suit seemed... otherworldly, not something of mere men, as though it was forged by the Emperor himself for his chosen champions.

The gauntlets of the suit clasped the handle of a long sword held point down in front of the armor. The blade of the sword was just slightly shorter than Xanthis, and the handle added at least another foot to the length of the weapon. The blade gave the impression of flame frozen into metal, with the cutting edge honed to a razor edge, the metal of which seemed _incandescent_ somehow, and the reverse was decorated with elaborate, flamelike barbs.

It was wondrous.

"It probably won't work." Freya admitted. "But with these, you have a chance of killing the daemon, Xanthis."

The world froze. _Can I really do that_? Xanthis thought, stumbling slightly and grabbing the arm of his chair for support. _Can I be that man again_?"

"I'll do it." Xanthis said. "There are a few messages I need to send first."

* * *

"Prepare for release." The cool voice of the capsule said as Xanthis and the pod plunged through the atmosphere of Serneldra IV. "Opening. Please have a pleasant flight."

An arc of light appeared around Xanthis' toes, parallel to his body, and rapidly began to widen. Gale-force winds found their way into the pod and buffeted Xanthis for a moment, though he barely felt them through his armor. Then the entire drop capsule split in half, and Xanthis fell.

Strength flowed through him from the armor. The sword was absent, but Freya had assured him that it was stored in the Warp, ten heartbeats away. He had called the blade into his hands once, and it had worked.

A series of modified drop pack fired, slowing his descent. Xanthis looked down. Below him, a thin purple miasma hung over the land, the literal touch of Chaos.

Xanthis fell into the smog, though it seemed to burn away as it touched his armor. An instant later, he struck the ground with a sound like a thunderclap, crouched with one knee on the ground and his arms thrust to either side. He thought he saw a momentary cloud of luminous smoke appear around him, but it was either imaginary or short lived. However, the warp mist seemed to fade around him.

He began the process of summoning his blade. He heard his heartbeat became strangely loud in his ears, and he looked up at the Daemon. It stood five times his height and had the vague form of a woman, but something, beyond the fact that it had four arms, off about it. Its face looked _almost_ human, _almost_ beautiful, but again, something was off. Its head was surrounded by a crown of horns, and it wore next to nothing on its strange body.

It held enormous swords in two of its hands, and one of its arms terminated in a long, whiplike tentacle. The fourth hand was empty.

As the tenth heartbeat thudded in Xanthis' ears, the massive blade coalesced out of mist and dropped into his hand, dripping with condensation.

The Daemon let out an almighty roar, and Xanthis took three quick steps forward and lept into the air. He flew toward the daemon, sword grasped in both hands and held behind his head.

* * *

"_God dammit Matt Ward_!"

-Thought for the day.

* * *

**One last thing; the first person/couple people who can successfully guess what series I stole Xanthis' shiny new stuff from or the 'metal eating pskyers' mentioned last chapter, you can dictate an action or line of dialogue I will work into a future chapter. Or a virtual cookie. You pick.**

**Emperor Protect.**


	8. Section 8

**I'm back, with another chapter in tow. In any case, Xanthis' new toys are a Shardblade and a suit of Shardplate, taken from Brandon Sanderson's _Stormlight Archives_. **

**I don't own it, but you should read it, or at least something else by Sanderson. His stuff is awesome.**

* * *

Xanthis' sword struck the one carried in the daemon's left hand and bounced off in a shower of sparks. As he fell, he spun and raised his blade, barely blocking a counterstroke from the other sword. Using the momentum from the daemon's strike to remain level for a moment, Xanthis continued his turn and slashed his sword through the daemon's upper thigh. At most, only the top foot and a half of the blade reached the beast, but it was enough. The monster _screamed_ in pain, a strange sound, like four overlapping voices just out of sync with each other.

He landed, then immediately began to backpedal. An instant later, the massive tentacle whip struck the ground where he had just been standing, slicing through dirt like water and shattering stone with frightening ease. Xanthis brought his sword down toward the appendage, but the daemon withdrew its weapon before he completed the stroke. Xanthis' sword struck the ground and continued practically unimpeded as he followed through. The ground slowed the sword about as much as mist.

Then the daemon spoke to him. It wasn't speech, as he knew it, but rather more a form of direct mental contact. It was a terrible thing; the thoughts of the daemon were like molten metal poured onto the ice of his mind. It made him want to scream; each of the beast's words brought fresh horrors to his mind.

It was enough to drive a man insane.

"_**wHy do yoU rEsist Me?"**_ The Keeper of Secrets demanded in its strange, four part voice. _**"WhAt dO yoU hoPe to acComPliSH beYond yOur own anNihilatIon?"**_

Xanthis shook his head, trying in vain to clear his mind while at the same time maintain a passable guard against the fiend. It didn't seem necessary, however; the daemon had momentarily ceased its attack and tilted its almost-beautiful face to stare at him.

_Why am I fighting this thing?_ He thought, staring at it. _What can I do against such a being?_ This thing was power incarnate, the worst of every species in the galaxy given flesh and form.

_No, I can't give up! I _must_ not!_ A second train of thought, so different as to almost belong to another mind, entered his head. _If I fail here_ he thought _they all die_. The faces of each of the forty billion who would die, everyone he knew on Serneldra, flashed through his mind like the muzzle flashes of an assault cannon.

Then the thought of the forty _trillion_ who could lose their lives if the Freya Complex fell into the hands of Chaos. If that happened, it could fuel a miniature Black Crusade, enough to take the entire sector.

"_**SO yOu rEfuSE to sTAnd doWn beFore mE?"**_ The daemon said. Something flickered across it's haunting face. _**"yiEld nOw, aNd I shAll conveRt yoUr peOple to tHe serVice of tHe PriNce Of ExCess. CoNtInue tHis gESture, aND yOU kNow thE conSeQuencES."**_

The Daemon gestured with its empty hand, and Xanthis fell into darkness.

"_MOVE, YOU MISBEGOTTEN SONS OF GROX!" The commissar shouted "I'LL EXECUTE THE LAST MAN OFF THIS TIN CAN!"_

_As the commissar gestured furiously with his bolt pistol, the front ramp of the 'assault boat', actually a hastily converted shuttle, dropped. The instant the wall of steel and ceramite was clear, a storm of pulse fire devastated the first three ranks._

_The remaining soldiers surged forward, and several more were cut down by pulse fire._

_One man, perhaps smarted than the others, dove to the ground off to the side of the ramp. The Tau Fire Warriors obliterating the company of guardsmen disembarking had bigger devilfish to fry; they paid him no mind._

Xanthis raised his blade as the daemon's mental assault continued. He couldn't risk another jump; that would be a bad idea for a number of reasons. He turned and charged the daemon's right leg, the one he had already damaged.

As he reached the leg and swung, the daemon moved impossibly fast, and his blade met only air. He whirled around to face the daemon's new position; somehow, it had ended up behind him. He recovered from his attack just in time to parry another stroke from the fiend's massive blade.

_The guardsmen and a small band of companions trudged across the mud on the battlefield. They were trapped in a small hollow, perhaps a crater dug by an artillery piece. The mud rim protected them, but it they moved, the Tau drone sensor platforms would pinpoint them immediately. _

_And it was just a matter of time before the xenos' grid search brought them on top of the humans' hiding spot._

_The guardsmen leading the group clutched the hilt of a scavenged chainsword nervously. He was, of course, completely aware of the peril of their situation. In terse whispers, he began to convey the beginnings of a plan to the men next to him._

_A few minutes later, the alien's search grid had brought then one square of their search away from the guardsmen. In the pit, the leading guardsman flicked the activator on his chainsword and charged out of the hole, the others following behind him, brandishing wide variety of weapons. _

_The charging humans took the xenos by surprise, and the aliens were unable to bring their pulse weapons to bear in time to fire effectively on the guardsmen. An instant later, the humans were among the aliens, lashing out in all directions. _

_The lead guardsman crouched slightly and swept his chainsword low, toward the leg of the Fire Warrior. As the alien lowered his strange ceremonial blade to block, the guardsman recovered from his feint, struck high, and rammed his chainsword into the xenos' gut._

_He turned to engage the next Fire Warrior, already knowing how the battle would end._

_One by one, the guardsmen fell, brought down by their foe's superior weaponry or overwhelming numbers. The lead guardsman swung his chainsword, finishing a Fire Warrior, and turned to face the xenos leader._

_The two beings were alone on the battlefield._

_They charged, and then there was one._

Xanthis slammed his blade point-first into the ground as the daemon swung its massive blade, his sword digging nearly a foot into the ground. The massive weapon struck it and bounced off in a shower of sparks. The shock ran through his arms with enough force to have broken them, had it not been for his armor.

As the daemon reeled from the impact, Xanthis withdrew his blade from the ground and returned to a guard position.

"_**yOu arE ALone!"**_ Xanthis winched as the beast screamed into his mind. Communicating with the daemon was maddening enough, but it felt like he was hearing the fiend from a distance, or like it was shouting at him through a wall. Xanthis had no idea what was causing it, but he wasn't complaining; it was probably the only reason he was still sane.

"_**SurRender tO me! On aLl frOnts, yOur aLLIEs anD solDiers scaTTEr like dUSt BefoRe tHe wInd Of the PrImorDial tRUth. YoU hAVe nO chaNce to SuRvIve!"**_

Xanthis watched as the daemon raised its sword arms and drew its whip back. He stood still for a moment. Something radiated out from the Keeper Of Secrets, a sense of triumph, joy in breaking Xanthis.

The daemon swung its blades downward, forming a 'V' toward Xanthis. The instance before the swords struck, Xanthis leapt, activating the drop packs that had been hastily attached to his armor for his landing as he did so.

The Keeper's blades slammed into the ground with an almighty thud. An instant later, Xanthis landed on the right shoulder of the daemon. His Shardblade flashed, and the Daemon's monstrous right sword arm separated from its body and flashed into energy.

* * *

On the bridge of the _Spirit of Serneldra_, for the second time that day, a gasp ran through the command deck.

"Dear Emperor." The acting Commanding Officer, Helena Harrington, said, making the sign of the Aquila. "By the Throne, what was that?"

There was no answer immediately forthcoming. In particular, the sensor technicians were stunned, given that they had seen the actual quantitative reading on the event. The residual energy of the event was drifting into the upper atmosphere and was interfering with their sensors.

"Um, excuse me," the Bridge Astropath said, "If you will, I may be able to explain this."

The Captain nodded for him to continue.

"Now" he said "the Governor is down there fighting a Greater Daemon, one which has been summoned here into the Materium. Greater Daemons are unstable, and being summoned here only exacerbates that. When they're summoned here, they can't stay long; picture a hurricane stuffed into a balloon."

"So..."

"Normally, their energy dissipates as they stay in the Materium, and fades away fairly quickly once they're, well, I suppose you'd say killed." The Astropath took a deep breath. "Now, this part is a bit more complicated. Being blind, I rely primarily on my psychic senses to perceive the world around me. And that sword the Governor was holding was... blinding. Against a pure Warp entity, I wouldn't be surprised if anything he severed wouldn't simply flash back into psychic energy."

"Um... I see." Helenia said. This was somewhat outside her area of expertise.

"Lady Captain!" The Tactical Officer shouted. "We are currently within range of Serneldra IV. At your command, we can begin firing on the planet with the railguns at your command!"

"Excellent," she said, turning toward the battlespace tactical viewscreen. To be honest, she was glad to have something to do that she actually understood. Daemons were well and good, but she said her prayers and left that sort of thing to the Inquisition.

A detailed map of the contested region of the planet appeared on screen, traceries and shading which denoted friendly and enemy positions appearing on the display as reports filtered onto the hulk of a battleship.

As Helena and her officers began selecting targets, dots representing targeted areas Further dots appeared, calls for fire transmitted up from ground control. After several minutes, Helena finalized the fire plan.

"Allright!" She said, standing up activating the shipwide vox system. "Attention all crewmembers," she said, thrusting her arm forward and splaying her fingers toward the battlespace display. "It's time to show these treasonous bastards the power of the Serneldran Navy!"

* * *

What Captain Harrington said was, technically speaking, not legal. The _Spirit of Serneldra_ was certainly not a ship of the sector battlefleet, and individual systems were not supposed to be allowed to maintain their own interstellar fleets.

That point was primarily moot, however, as the first volley of electromagnetically propelled slugs ripped from the unfinished warship into the void. Weighing in at over one ton and traveling at more than one tenth of the speed of light, the slugs packed a hefty punch.

Despite their formidable speed, the _Spirit _was orbiting far from Serneldra IV, beyond the orbit of the outermost of its three moons. Thus, the railgun rounds took more than nine minutes to arrive on target. When they did, however, they struck like a rain of thunder.

* * *

Clayton peered out of the window of the former residence building, slowly extending his body beyond the ferrocrete wall sheltering him. Spotting the cultists he knew were present, he moved back slowly. Once he was covered, he stepped back to give himself some space and raised his railgun.

He took a deep breath, then sprang forward, placed his rifle on the windowsill, sighted the heretics, and fired a long burst.

As the heretics spun toward the source of the fire, Clayton dropped down behind the wall mere moments before the hail of return lasfire. As always, it was sporadic, random, and horribly aimed, but it could easily still kill him.

_Well_, Clayton though as shards of ferrocrete knocked loose by a hit on the windowsill rained down on his helmet _maybe not as easily as it could in the past_. He reached down to his belt and grabbed his field vox transmitter.

"This is Team Leader Alpha," he broadcast. "All units report status and location."

"This is Cadia Team. We are in the residence building, eight floors above you."

"Copy that," Clayton responded "Status?"

"We're good for now," Cadia Team responded "we are currently at nine effectives, with two moderately wounded."

"This is Bravo team. We are currently pinned down below street level in the building across the street from your position. We are down to six," a scream could be heard faintly across the vox "make that five effectives. No wounded. Please advise."

Clayton scrambled across the floor to where he had left some of his excess wargear. He opened up a pouch on one of the bags left there and removed an annotated map of the section of the city. He flicked through it, looking for the area where his unit was currently pinned down.

"Bravo Team," he said, looking at a map of tunnels. "There is a passage between our buildings. I am firing a grenade toward your building now. If you can, tell me where you are relative to its impact."

Clayton sprang up to another window and fired a grenade toward what he judge to be the center of the wall of the adjacent pivoted his rifle and fired several bursts at the cultists in the streets, then dropped again to avoid the return fire.

"This is Bravo. We are a couple dozen meters to our left of the impact. Please advise."

Clayton bent over his map and began instructing Bravo team on accessing the tunnel. Lasgun fire cracked in the air outside, occasionally overshadowed for a moment by the low roar of the distant heavy artillery. He flinched a bit every time he heard that. He was glad, though; most of the big guns belonged to the loyalists, and they were one of the few things that were keeping the Imperial soldiers alive at present.

Once he had finished instructing Bravo, Clayton opened a channel to Alpha Team, his personal command. "Alpha Team, Report."

"Command." Siech, the sergeant leading Alpha said. "We're doing ok down here. We've got the bottom few floors secured." He sighed "or as best we can with eight effectives."

"Good. I've got Bravo coming in from the building across the street. Keep an eye out for them. Command out. Ave Imperator."

* * *

Lloyd sat in the cockpit of his Knightmare. Around him, a variety of implements ranging from plasma cutters to buzzsaws slowly cut into the armor around him. He had put on a set of earmuffs he had found in one of the ejection survival packs, so the sound was reduced to a tolerable level.

It was a tedious process. In the battle for the pass, he had managed to take so much energy fire on his Knigmare that the cockpit had welded closed. As a result, the Mobile Cavalry support team on board the Revenant was cutting him out of his machine.

Slowly.

To be perfectly honest, Lloyd was somewhat afraid. When he had been battling that thing, which he had heard someone call a Herald of Tea-, Tze-, Tnz-... T-something, he had been doing his job. Things had been happening too fast for fear.

Now, however, sitting in his dark cockpit, with plenty of time to think, he could be afraid.

A spot of light appeared over his head and began to move out of his field of vision, leaving a dimly glowing trail behind it. Several more points appeared, tracing their own lines. The sound level dropped noticeably; they must have stopped using the saws.

Abruptly, the automatic cockpit release activated. The rear seals on the cockpit opened part way, allowing Lloyd to climb out.

"Well, hail the conquering hero!" Lloyd turned toward the speaker, Artisan Voreld. He was a techpriest, though with remarkable few augmentations, who was responsible for much of the recovered knowledge that allowed the construction of the Knightmare units.

"I don't know," Lloyd said, climbing down the ruined back of his machine. "I mean, plenty of the others pulled some pretty awesome stuff out there."

"Yes, yes, but none of them killed a Daemonic Herald." Voreld said, crossing his arms. "Men have been canonized for less."

"Well, I _did_ have my Knightmare. I doubt many past demonslayers had the same advantage."

"Yes. You did." Voreld's eyes narrowed. "And look what you did to my metal child. There are some gentlemen here from the Inquisition who want to talk to you. Please go away while I try to recover something from this wreck you brought me."

Lloyd paused, too terrified by the mention of the Inquisition to take much note in the tech-priest's demeanor. He stood still for a moment, then began to walk out of the hanger.

Slowly.

Lloyd walked down the short hallway inside the Revenant. Why would the Inquisition be interested in _him_ of all people? He turned and faced the door leading to the section of the troop compartment that the Inquisitorial representatives had partitioned off for their own usage. He reached his hand up to the open button and pressed it.

The door slid open silently, revealing the darkened room beyond. Lloyd took a deep breath and walked in.

As he walked in, several lights activated, revealing a large desk of varnished wood. Behind the desk were two men, one sitting and one standing. Both were wearing dark, well-tailored suits of the style favored on the most advanced worlds of the Imperium, and they absolutely oozed danger.

A simple wooden chair sat in front of the desk, facing it.

"Come in, Lloyd." The sitting man said, beckoning. "We have a few questions for you."

Lloyd began walking toward the desk. The standing man elbowed his associate, though given his height, his motion caught the sitting man in the neck.

"Ah, yes, how could we forget to introduce ourselves?" He gestured at himself. "I am Inquisitorial Acolyte Vlein Calvar, and my associate here is Angelo Miriani. Now please, take a seat."

* * *

"Range lock!" Melvin shouted "Target, soft structure. High explosive round. Fire!"

"Firing." Maria said. The M1A5 tank rocked back with the recoil from the shot.

"Target destroyed." Mark muttered. "Advancing."

"Be advised I have over twenty and climbing infantry contacts on my scopes." Mason said, glancing at the readout for the tank's auspex suite.

"Mark, turn to present front glacis, then full stop." Melvin said. "Let them come."

The cultists began to appear out of the ruins on the building like bugs crawling out of woodwork.

"Just, ah, out of curiosity." Maria said "how the _hel_ did they survive that?"

"Does it really matter?" Mason muttered, preparing a flechette launcher.

"Mutation." Melvin said, looking at his displays. "Apparently that sort of thing happens a lot with chaos."

Abruptly, the tank shook slightly. Alarms sounded, and damage alerts flashed on the monitors.

"Lascannon!" Mason shouted.

Instinctively, Melvin grabbed the controls for his heavy bolter and returned fire, sending a stream of shells at the attacker. The rounds detonated around the pair of cultists manning the heavy weapon. After several seconds of firing, he placed a round in the head of one of the cultists manning the weapon, just as the other cultist managed to frantically slot a fresh power pack into the weapon.

A ray of light struck the tank the instant before a bolter round obliterated the traitor.

"Status!" Melvin shouted, looking at his displays. The impact of the two laser shots had noticeably increased the internal temperature of the armored vehicle.

"All systems operational," Mason said, tapping a few controls. "We're clear to advance."

* * *

The kinetic kill weapons fired by the _Spirit of Serneldra_ reached their targets. Each of the spikes struck the upper atmosphere and formed a fiery bloom. They deviated slightly from their targets, but given their incredible speed, that didn't particularly matter.

The slugs of steel traced long lines of plasma as they raced down through the atmosphere, shedding both mass and velocity at an incredible rate. Then, faster than the human eye could open, they impacted.

Each weapon slammed into the ground, releasing the energy of thousands of tons of lesser explosives. The heat and light generated by the blast burned everything immediately surrounding the impact site. A second later, the blast wave generated by the impact rushed outward, leveling everything surrounding the target.

In the instants following the strike, tens of thousands of cultists were sent to meet their dark masters. Meanwhile, in distantly high orbit, _Spirit of Serneldra_ had already fired a second volley, although the rounds were still minutes away.

* * *

Felix sat in his command bunker, feeling conflicted. On one hand, the battleship in orbit had completely _wasted_ thousands of cultists on the ground, and was already in the midst of an encore. The advance was going well, though it had gotten hung up in a small city where a few hundred thousand heretics had decided to make a desperate stand. At present, he had the mostly encircled the holdout and had forces engaging on the perimeter to pin down the enemy.

On the other hand, there was that damn Greater Daemon. Reports indicated that the enemy was rallying around it in the southern pass. Worse still was the prospect of actually facing the thing in battle. Saying anything for certain about a daemon was hard, and reports of their strength varied widely, but few accounts disagreed with them having the ability to rip through entire armies.

Xanthis, however impossible it may have seemed, appeared to be handling the fiend fairly well. To perfectly honest, when he had gone forward to engage the daemon, no one had really expected him to last very long. It would be a heroic story, a man heroically, but ultimately futilely, laying down his life in battle against overwhelming odds.

Maybe this story would end differently.

"Marshall Felix, sir!" Felix turned to look at the junior officer rushing into the command center. The young man was grasping several sheets of paper and his face was flush. "We have a situation, sir!"

"What is it? Speak, Man!"

"Missile emanations, sir, coming from the area surrounding Melanmurisk!"

"Intercontinental missiles?: Felix demanded, springing to his feet and slamming his fist on the table.

"No sir, nothing like that." The junior officer swallowed before continuing. "The sensor techs say they look like orbital missiles, sir."

"Can the _Spirit_ neutralize them?"

"I... I don't think so, sir. There is a cloud of some type of energy handing over that area that is probably interfering with their scans."

_Shit_ Felix thought. _We really needed that orbital support. I don't know _how_ we can overcome numbers like these without it!_

"Um.. actually, sir, there is something we could do."

"Well, what is it?"

"Our Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, sir. Governor Xanthis gave you launch permission before he left, sir."

Felix tightened his fist. "Well, what are we doing, then! Prepare for missile launch."

* * *

"Sir!" One of Clayton's soldiers shouted over the vox "we have multiple groups of hostiles entering the building."

"Estimated numbers?" Clayton responded.

"Ah... around fifty of them, maybe, sir. I-" a horrible gurgling sound came over the vox communicator, then the signal cut out.

Clayton grimaced, then contacted his remaining soldiers. "People, we have multiple hostiles entering the building. We are going to focus our defence on the fifth floor; it appears that the enemy had not yet reached that far."

As Clayton explained the plan, his anxiety grew. Several times, soldiers cut into his broadcast to report enemy positions, and all too often they were cut off, choking on their own blood.

"And to conclude, everyone be prepared for close quarters combat. Construct barricades if possible, do everything you can to make them bleed for their advance. That is all."

He returned his vox communicator to his belt and began to examine his railgun. The case of the weapon was covered in dents and scratches from the rough treatment of the past hours, and it could probably use a good cleaning.

Then, he reached down and loosened the strap on the sheath of the ACS sword he had... acquired. Oddly enough, the weapon was fairly easy to wield, even without any form of enhancement. While the sword possessed neither the raw armor piercing capability of full power weapon nor a chainsword's ability to sever the limbs of its wielder (arguably not a drawback), it was cheap enough to equip all of the Armored Combat Suit troopers.

Then he went to die.

* * *

Xanthis spun, armored feet biting into the hard ground as bleed off the speed from his flight. He had severed one of the daemon's limbs, but the resulting blast of warp energy had flung him away from the monster.

As he stopped, Xanthis looked around. Over a hundred cultists had spotted him in flight, and were now closing in on his position. Under his helmet, Xanthis smiled. This wouldn't be a problem.

Xanthis thrust his right arm out to the side as the first traitor came within a hundred feet of him. Now that he was closer, Xanthis could see that there was something wrong with the man. One of his arms was unnaturally long and appeared to possess at least one extra joint.

The first supernaturally loud heartbeat echoed in Xanthis' ears. He was standing on a gently sloping hill, with the heretics rushing him from downhill forming a rough, rapidly narrowing half circle around him.

A second heartbeat.

The front of Xanthis' Shardplate was covered in small cracks, each one leaking a tiny trickle of luminous smoke. However, in the moments since he had been sent flying, the streams leaking from his armor had diminished significantly.

A third heartbeat.

Xanthis looked at another cultist The man was even more clearly mutated, his skin an odd purple color and his twisted, predatory smile quite literally nearly reaching his ears.

A fourth heartbeat.

One of the mutants appeared to be closing with Xanthis much more quickly than the others. The mutant's legs were split at the knee, and his four feet churned over the ground unnaturally fast.

A fifth heartbeat. Xanthis blade was halfway summoned.

The mutants were nearly upon him now. If they surrounded him, they could potentially overwhelm him.

A sixth heartbeat.

So he attacked.

Seven.

Xanthis charged toward the split-legged mutant leading the pack. He clenched his armored fist and swung it forward. The Chaos enhanced skull of the traitor shattered before the might of the strike. As the body of the cultist fell, Xanthis heard an Eighth heartbeat.

Another heretic, who had circled around behind Xanthis, slashed at Xanthis with deformed, clawlike hands. They scraped across the back of his armor ineffectually, making a horrible screeching noise. Xanthis backhanded the man in the chest, knocking him away.

Nine.

A mutant sprang into the air, hideously bladed hands extended toward Xanthis' face. He grabbed one of its wrists just below the sharp bits, then spun the thing away from him, slamming it into a mutant off to his right.

The tenth heartbeat echoed in his ears. Xanthis held out his arm, just as his Shardblade appeared in a cloud of mist. He felt _right_ as he wrapped his fingers around the handle, as through the weapon had been constructed for this very purpose, and _knew_ that was what it was being used for.

Drops of condensed water trailed from the blade as Xanthis swung it in a wide arc. The weapon struck the the upper torso of a tall, burly mutant and kept moving. The edge of the Blade blurred slightly as it passed through the traitor's body.

As the Shardblade passed through him, the eyes of the mutant seemed to burn out. The creature fell, twin streams of smoke trailing from his face.

Xanthis continued his swing, his overly long blade slicing through three additional mutants, then returned to a guard position.

One of the enemies reached out and attempted to grab Xanthis' off hand with some kind of tentacle. The thing wrapped its appendage around Xanthis' armored forearm; his armor conveyed to him a strange, truly disgusting sensation of something cool and slimy coiling around his arm.

Xanthis snapped his arm back, yanking the mutant into his reach. He swung his Shardblade, killing the tentacled mutant and one of its fellows.

As Xanthis continued to purge the mutants, he felt a feeling of fury and frustration rise up in him. _How _dare_ they_? He thought, dropping a dozen mutants with a trio of quick strikes. _They come here and seduce the people I have been given responsibility for, and twist them into these _things_ to serve their own ends_.

He moved like a whirlwind, sword flashing, stacking the bodies of mutants with burned out eyes around him like cordwood.

_And what does it say about me_ Xanthis wondered, continuing his slaughter, _that I could do nothing to stop it?_

* * *

Moments later, Xanthis stood alone on the field. The presence of the Keeper of Secrets still resonated in his mind; somehow, he could easily sense it to the south. Looking at the twisted bodies of his subjects, Xanthis silently swore vengeance for the men he had just slain, turned, and began to run.

In a nondescript field near Serneldra Imperia, a rusty steel hatch slowly opened, revealing a much better maintained adamantium hatch, which began to slowly iris open. Dozens of explosive bolts detonated, freeing the missile within.

Nothing happened for a moment as the launch crew quadruple-checked their figures. Then one of the men flicked a switch, raised a cap, pressed a button, and condemned thirty million people to death.

Thrusters at the base of the rocket ignited, and it began to rise on a column of superheated air. As the immense missile cleared the launch silo, its primary plasma thrusters came online. The missile tilted slightly southwest and began to climb rapidly.

Very soon, the missile breached the Serneldran Troposphere and was joined by two of its fellows; one had failed to launch successfully and disintegrated on the launch pad.

The missiles, now in low orbit, continued their flight.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the Chaos controlled area around Melanmurisk, the orbital antiship missiles entered their final launch phase.

* * *

Several minutes later, the Loyalist missiles entered their terminal approach. The so called 'busses' that tipped the missiles opened, each one revealing a conical warhead.

Two of missiles veered off course, releasing the Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles to engage missile launch sites surrounding the city.

One Serneldran missile, however, stayed on target for the city center. It released its twelve warheads, each of the type typically deployed on a Deathstrike Missile, on a pattern across the urban center.

As the MIRVs fell, however, the first wave of anti-ship missiles took off from the surface of the planet. The two groups of weapons passed each other in the upper atmosphere.

A moment later, the Serneldran warheads reached their predetermined detonation points. The machine spirits controlling the weapons activated the fusion warheads.

Thirty six miniature stars appeared over the surface of Serneldra.

First, a massive burst of heat and light was released from each detonation. The storm of what would once have been widely known as X-rays killed many near the epicenter of each blast, killing them a fraction of an instant before the surge of more mundane energy could burn them to death along with other unsheltered people even farther from the blast.

Each explosion also released a massive blast wave. The Shock fronts shot outward, moving just faster than sound, painfully slow compared to the bursts of radiation. They swept mercilessly through all in their path, crushing the live out of those sheltered from the radiation.

The weapons were not yet done, however. As air rushed in to fill the voids left by the shockwaves, it fanned fires started by the bomb flash. They voraciously consumed all available oxygen as they superheated everything left, incinerating those few who had survived thus far.

It would be days until the radiation levels became low enough for the crows to pick what they could from the fifty million dead.

* * *

"_**yOU thInk yOU cAN DefeAt mE?"**_ The Keeper of Secrets demanded as it tried to crush Xanthis _**"on yOur OrdERS, yoUR seRvanTS hAVe Put FIFty mILLion INnOcENTS to tHe tOrCh. Do You beLieVE That thIS EXceSS doES nOt gLOrify She Who Thirsts? HOw HaVE yOU noT BecoME lIKE US"**_

Xanthis said nothing as the words of the daemon echoed in his mind. He held his Shardblade over his head in two hands, his whole body straining as he tried to hold back the massive sword the field held it its left hand.

"_**EvEN if YOu arE VicTORious Here, The PRImordial TRUth shaLl sTill TriuMph. ThIs sILly LIttle World cOUnts FoR NOthiNg iN the GrANd sCheME of ThiNgs. Your ViCTORY SimPLy plANts tHe sEeds for YoUr eVEntual deFEAT."**_

"No." Xanthis muttered, grunting as his Shardblade was pushed a few inches closer to his head "There wouldn't have been any innocents in that city. Your infection has been festering there for months, and you've been summoning daemons. Anyone less than wholly devoted to your cause would have been used as a sacrifice, or hunted down by the daemons once they arrived." Xanthis smiled. "Do you think I would have given away my launch codes if that wasn't the case?"

"_**WeLl, I dON't knOw yoU weLl eNOugh tO Say FOr sURe"**_ the daemon said. _**"BuT I WOuld PRObABlY guESS thaT YoU wOUld. CerTaINly, moSt Of youR kInd WoUlD HaVe."**_

Xanthis pushed the daemon's blade back a couple of inches. "Like I said," he spat "you don't know me." He gained a few more inches. "You see, I'm not very good at my job."

Then, another, somewhat less philosophical thought occurred to him. _Wait a sec, doesn't this thing have a tentacle or-_

Xanthis was cut off as the daemon's tentacle connected, slapping him across the body and sending him sprawling. Webs of cracks, like the luminous traceries of some insane spider, appeared across the left side of his body where he had been hit.

"_**GIve IN!"**_ The daemon demanded, stretching its empty hand out toward Xanthis.

Xanthis saw himself. He saw himself from myriad angles and perspectives.

He saw himself on a ship, which he somehow knew was bound for the Sol System and Holy Terra. He watched as Xanthis disembarked the ship and somehow skipped to seeing himself in the chambers of the Senatorum Imperialis, before the High Lords of Terra themselves. He watched as he climbed the steps, and took a seat among them

His perspective twisted, and he saw himself on the field of battle, resplendent in his Shardplate, surrounded by ranks of ACS troopers, tanks, and Knightmares of all descriptions, Blade flashing as he drove the enemies of Mankind before him and crushed them beneath his feet.

Another shift. This time, he saw Serneldra. First, as a lush green, white, and blue ball, like a shining gemstone hanging in space. He saw Serneldra V, a glittering dark sphere, like a polished onyx, distinguished from the background of space by the shining lights covering its surface. He saw Serneldra III, a verdant, blooming world, covered in enough bountiful plants to feed the entire sub-sector.

The pace of the shifting visions accelerated.

Xanthis watched, from every possible angle, as he won triumphs and glories unimaginable. He then watched himself enjoy the fruits of those victories. Though he tried to block it out, he could not help but be enticed by the visions.

"_**ALl ThIS aND mORe iS poSSIBLE,"**_ the voice of the daemon said, echoing in his head. _**"SImPLY swEAR yOUR selF tO CHAOS, to tHE PRinCE of PLeasURE, aNd yOu Can ACHievE alL yOUr GoALs. YoU Can EXPErience ECSTASY the SerVantS of tHE CorPSe GOd CoULD BArelY beGIN to IMAgine." **_The daemon paused, then continued, its voice lower _**"YOu COuld SaVE yOUR peOPLE."**_

Everything went silent. The visions ceased. _**"YOU NEED ONLY BOW YOUR HEAD."**_

Xanthis stopped for a moment. He it was. He could fix the problems that he could find no way to solve. He would never again need to sacrifice his people like this war demanded. He could retain his authority and power, and live in splendor.

He just needed to sell his soul.

"NO!" Xanthis shouted. In an instant, he shattered the glamor the Keeper of Secrets had woven over his mind. He watched himself leading hordes in battle, driving a thrust toward the Eye of Terror, stabbing the men and women defending it in the back.

He saw Serneldra overrun with Warp rifts and prowled by daemons, its people enslaved and forced to spend their short, nightmarish lives working the hellish foundry the Freya Complex had become.

Xanthis watched as products of that awful forge began to flow out from Serneldra. He watched as hordes of cultists, armed with railguns and armored with pseudo-active plate rise up and butcher PDFs and Guard regiments. Chaos Space Marines, their numbers augmented by scouts and traitor veterans in Armored Combat Suits slice through their loyal brethren.

He watched his people die.

"No." Xanthis said again, this time in a whisper. "I decline your offer, now and for eternity." His around him, the visions shattered. As he regained his senses, he found that the daemon had wrapped him in its tentacle arm and lifted him in the air, with the tip of the tentacle gently increasing the forehead of his helm.

"No!" Xanthis shouted. "I WILL PROTECT THOSE WHO CANNOT PROTECT THEMSELVES!"

The Daemon _screamed_ as Xanthis exploded with light.

* * *

Clayton drove his sword through the chest of a cultist. He withdrew it as the woman fell, he blood clicking on the power field of the blade. She was the last one in the room; he returned his sword to its scabbard on his belt and leaned against the wall to take a quick breath.

He grimaced and reached down to his side as the wound there sent a stab of pain through him. One of the Cultists had stuck a bayonet in his gut in a spot where several other hits had worn down his armor.

"This is Alpha Team leader." He muttered, activating his coms gear. "Twenty two enemies eliminated. Status?"

"This is Bravo Leader. We're down to four effectives, but our sector seems quiet."

"This is Cadia Team Leader. All clear in our sector, for now anyway."

"Good." Clayton sent on an open broadcast to the squad. "It looks like the area is clear, and I'm hearing on the command net that we are wearing them down, and they've mostly retreated toward the city center. All of you have done fine work here today, and in the rest of the campaign." He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. The wound in his side made that painful. "Goodbye."

He cut the com link, then drew his sword. He leaned more fully against the wall and slid down it slowly.

A few moments later he met the Emperor.

* * *

The Callidus Assassin cut her way through the warcamp of the traitor 'army'.She torched supplies, sabotaged vehicles and, of course, killed. She had left a river of blood behind her as she made in way in a rough spiral in the camp. Hundreds, or probably thousands, of traitors but, like she had been trained, she never stayed in one place long enough for them to find her.

She swung her Hyper Phase Sword, decapitating a traitor, then turned and fired her neural shredder into a group of his companions. At least, she never stayed in one place long enough for the enemy to find her in big enough groups of pose a serious threat to her, anyway.

The assassin finished off the few surviving heretics with slices from her phase blade, the turned and began running at a right angle to the way she had come. As she ran, she listened to the sounds of her pursuers. It sounded like a larger than usual group this time. She stopped and raised her left forearm as though she was looking at a watch. She pressed several buttons set into the armor on her wrist, then began to run again.

A moment later, several low rumbles echoed over the camp. The assassin had detonated several high explosive and incendiary remote detonated explosive charges she had scattered across the path on her way to her previous confrontation. That ought to shake her pursuers up a bit.

As she continued to run, varying her course to make pursuit more challenging, a chime sounded in her headgear. It was an indication of a communication. While that might not have been particularly important in regular combat, assassins tended to be deployed alone and work fairly autonomously, it was key for a Calidius if she was maintaining an infiltration persona. If she had to perform combat operation for three days straight, simply dropping off of the map simply was not usually an option.

Her system would receive any communications directed at her alter ego and relay them to her. Then, she could view, read, or listen to any of them and respond. Her implants, along with the machine spirit that operated her combat suit, would filter and alter her response, neatly removing any sign that she had been in suspicious circumstances when she sent the message.

She looked at the data tag on the communication. It was a voice recording from the governor, oddly enough. The assassin played it. A small square image of the governor appeared in the corner of her vision. He appeared to be wearing some form of strange armor, though with the helmet removed. It took her a moment to realize that he was actually lying down on a nondescript, greyish surface.

He said nothing for a moment, then began. "Castella," he said, his shining eyes looking like they were boring into the camera "I would like to apologize for all of the idiocy I have made you put up with over the last few months."

The recording of Xanthis paused for a moment, and then continued. "Due solely to my own incompetence as a governor, leader, and administrator, I have forced you to bail me out of dozens of difficult situations. That's not even taking into account the time I nearly got you killed when we found the Freya Complex."

He took a deep breath. "I suppose I should tell you that I am going to my death now. Somehow, the traitors managed to summon a Greater Daemon, a Keeper of Secrets. Left unchecked, a monster like that could single handedly turn the tide of the entire war. Fourtatully, Freya had something in storage that might allow me to defeat the daemon. Honestly, though, I don't think my chances are very good. I'll try to buy everyone some time, maybe a few people can be evacuated. I want you to be one of them." Xanthis said nothing for a moment.

A group of cultists, numbering twenty or so, appeared from around a corner. They assumed a firing formation with a surprising degree of skill and leveled a variety of threatening weapons at Castella.

The fight didn't last very long.

* * *

Despite the destruction of the launch sites, the forces of Chaos had still managed to get several missiles off the ground.

Now, eleven heavy anti-ship missiles were streaking through space toward the _Spirit of Serneldra_. The missiles were moving quite rapidly, streaking through the space between Serneldra IV and its moons.

Aboard the _Spirit_, the bridge crew could see the incoming missiles and knew, utterly and completely, that they could do nothing about them. They were maneuvering to evade, of course, but that was futile. The _Spirit_ was a battleship, an in its unfinished state, her acceleration curve was even flatter than on the design specs.

There were enough escape shuttles to lift the entire skeleton crew on the ship, but due the the seemingly random layout of the scattered pressurized passageways combined with the strange distribution made it a grim mathematical certainty the many would be unable to reach the escape vessels before the missiles impacted.

Once she had realized that the battleship could never escape the missiles, the captain wasted no time issuing the order to abandon ship.

Across the ship, thousands of crewmen began to make their way to the shuttle bays and escape pod launchers.

However, something strange happened. On a standard Imperial Navy vessel, once the order to abandon ship finally came, the crew would have immediately swarmed to any method of escape. While thousands flocked to evacuate the ship, thousands more remained at their posts.

As a result, the the crew who elected to remain onboard continued to fight the ship. Under their guidance, countermeasures and point defence batteries came on line. Beams of coherent light and waves high velocity projectiles rippled out into space. The counterfire lacked the precision granted by the massive sensor suites and coginator banks that would have been installed later, but despite that, the big ship managed to kill four of the eleven incoming missiles.

Furthermore, somehow, the crew remaining on the ship also managed to fire one final salvo from the ship's heavy railguns.

Then seven remaining missiles impacted a moment later. The plasma warheads detonated, engulfing the _Spirit of Serneldra_ in atomic fire. Lacking the void shields and the heavy ceramite, adamantium, and battlesteel armor it would have received when complete, the wrath of attack was directed entirely at the unfinished superstructure of the ship.

For the brave souls who remained on board, the world ended in fire.

* * *

Xanthis struck with his Shardblade, sweeping the weapon through the chest of a daemonette. The daemon screamed as it fell, its eyes blazing and its body slowly falling apart. He stepped back and made two quick strokes with his blade, eliminating two more daemons.

In front of him, the Keeper of Secrets held its empty hand out, a blazing purple warp rift held between its outstretched fingers. The fiend's tentacle arm hung limply at its side; Xanthis hadn't seen it move since the daemon had attempted to seduce him with its visions.

As Xanthis watched, another daemonette was launched out of the rift and flew toward him. Xanthis sliced it out of the air, but not before it managed to get its pincer claws around his shoulder, scoring his left pauldron.

Xanthis felt alive. Something had suppressed his fatigue, swept it aside. As the daemon swung its sword, its sole remaining weapon, at him, he sidestepped the massive blade with insane speed he would have never thought himself capable of.

However, all was not in his favor. His armor was webbed with cracks, some of the serious, and all of them leaking smoke that burned with an incandescent light. Worse, his fatigue had only be suppressed, not removed, and he could feel it gnawing at the corners of whatever held it at bay.

It was time to end the war.

As the daemon recovered from its strike, Xanthis charged. He had tried this tactic before, but he was faster now, and he had wounded the daemon. As the daemon brought its empty hand down to swat him away, Xanthis leapt forward and grabbed its wrist.

The daemon snaped its hand upward in an effort to dislodge the insolent human who had pestered it so.

It worked.

Xanthis let go of the daemon, its motions putting him on a trajectory he judged to had a decent chance of launching him toward its head. Without his Shardplate, he would have judged it to be impossible.

He flew for a moment, then slammed into one of the daemon's hair-horns. There was a sound like the snapping metal as the back of Xanthis' armor cracked. He recovered as he slid down the slick black material of the horn. _I'm standing on a daemon's head_ Xanthis realized, just as his feet touched the fiend's scalp.

Wasting no time, Xanthis plunged his Shardblade into the demon's head. As he did so, the thing _roared_, a timeless screen of primordial rage. It flung its head back, and Xanthis began to fall, his gauntlet slipping off the handle of his Shardblade.

The weapon vanished into mist, and Xanthis began summoning it again.

For the first three heartbeats, he was tumbling through the forest of horns.

On the firth heartbeat, he reached out and grabbed one of the daemon's rearmost horns.

For four heartbeats, Xanthis hung in the air, the smoke leaking from the back of his armor looking for all the world like wings of light.

The tenth heartbeat echoed, and Xanthis' blade dropped into his hand. beads of condensation flew as he raised the weapon parallel to the ground, then drove it into the base of the Keeper's skull.

A shock rolled over Xanthis, like a sound felt in his chest that shook his very soul. Xanthis lost his grip as the daemon fell forward. He hung in the air for a moment, his fatigue returning.

_It's over_ he realized as he hit the ground _we won_.

Then the cost of that victory came crashing down on him, and he began to cry.

**END OF PART I**

* * *

**Well there you have it, people, the end of the first arc. I'll be taking a _short_ break while I plan out the next arc, which will definitely be Eldar. In the mean time, please leave a review or send me an PM about where you think this should go next. **

**Until next time,  
**

**The Emperor Protects  
**


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